Double Contact

by James White

  For a moment it radiated minor embarrassment, associated no doubt with a minor infringement of its Earth-human nudity taboo, then went on, “When it saw me I was wearing the only swimsuit I had with me, and this underwear is, well, differently styled and colored. It might not recognize me again. I think you’re expecting too much of me, sir.”

  “Perhaps,” he replied, “I’m expecting a miracle. When you are ready, friend Murchison.”

  They walked and flew for about thirty meters beyond the mark in the sand left by the meteorite shield. If it had been switched on they would have moved freely through it, for it was designed to stop only incoming objects, but they would not have been able to go back again. A few spiders were moving about close to their ships, and two of them were moving back along a ramp they had built between the beach and the wreck of Terragar, although what people who knew nothing of metal would think of such a hard, nonorganic structure, was anyone’s guess. Prilicla could feel Murchison’s irritation at being ignored as it lifted the speaking trumpet to its mouth.

  “Krisit,” it said, pointing at the nearest spider vessel, then turning to indicate Rhabwar. “Preket krisit.” It repeated the words several times before pointing at itself and saying several times, “Hukmaki.” Finally it pointed towards the spider vessel that had been first to arrive and so presumably contained her spider captain, and shouted, “Krititkukik.”

  There was no visible reaction, but he could feel the cloud of hostility that was emoting from the ships being laced with eddies of interest and curiosity. On the upperworks of the nearest vessel a spider appeared and began chittering loudly and continuously through its speaking trumpet, which was not directed at them. A party of five spiders assembled around the end of the boarding ramp. Suddenly they came scurrying towards them, unlimbering their crossbows as they came.

  “Krititkukik,” Murchison shouted again. “Humakik.”

  “They aren’t coming to talk,” said Prilicla.

  “I don’t have to be an empath to know that,” Murchison said, radiating the anger of disappointment. “Captain, the shield!”

  “Right,” said Fletcher, “I’m powering it up for full repulsion in ten seconds from now. You’ve got that much time to get back across the line or you stay out there with your friends.”

  Prilicla banked sharply and flew back the way he had come, weaving from side to side as the crossbow bolts whispered past his slowly beating wings. Then he thought that evasive action might not be such a good idea because the spiders were shooting while on the move, which meant that their accuracy would suffer and he might dodge into one of the bolts. He decided to do as Murchison was doing and move straight and fast while giving them a steady target at which to aim and hopefully miss.

  They crossed the disturbed line of sand with a full two seconds to spare before the meteorite shield stopped any more bolts from reaching them. The pathologist halted, turned, and for a moment watched the bolts that were heading straight at them bouncing off the shield and falling harmlessly onto the sand. The intensity of the spiders’ emotional radiation was such that he was forced to land, shaking uncontrollably. The pathologist raised its speaking trumpet again.

  “Don’t waste your breath, friend Murchison,” he said. “If you speak they will not listen. There are no calm, thinking minds among them. They feel only anger and disappointment, presumably at not being able to harm us, and an intensity of hatred and hostility so great that I haven’t felt anything like it since the Trolanni reaction when they thought friend Fletcher was a druul. Let’s return to our patients.”

  On their way back Prilicla was walking rather than flying beside Murchison. He saw it looking at his trembling limbs and felt its concern for the empathic pain he was feeling.

  “Oh, well,” it said, knowing that he knew its feelings and trying to move to a less painful subject, “at least we gave our bored, convalescent patients a little real-life drama to amuse them.”

  Before he could reply, Fletcher’s voice sounded in their headsets.

  “There’ll be no shortage of drama around here,” it said, in the calm voice it had been trained to use while reporting calamitous events. “The six spider vessels nearing the other side of the island will join the three already there within the next hour. An additional six units are hull-up on the horizon on this side, and there are two other three-unit fleets, which according to our wind-strength calculations, won’t reach us until early tomorrow. All the indications are that the spiders are mounting a combined land, sea, and air assault. Your patients will have ringside seats.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Neither the Earth-human DGDGs nor the Trolanni CHLIs were feeling worried by the impending attack because both species were star-travelers and were aware of the effectiveness of the meteorite shield. Terragar’s officers were feeling concern over the fact that the ongoing first contact with the spiders was not going well, but they were not deeply concerned because the ultimate responsibility for its mismanagement was not theirs and in the meantime they were willing to enjoy the spectacle. The feelings of Keet and Jasam were more selfish, radiating as they did intense relief that they were both alive and likely to remain that way, as well as general confusion at the strange things that were happening to and around them. Murchison, Danalta, and Naydrad had their feelings under control. It was the captain, whose voice was being relayed from Rhabwar’s control deck, who vocalized its worries by telling them not to worry.

  “There is no immediate cause for concern,” it said. “Our power pile will enable the life support and ship’s thrusters to be operated indefinitely; but not so, the tractor-beam units and meteorite protection. In a planetary atmosphere they drain five times the power required for operation in a vacuum, and this ship was designed for speedy casualty retrieval rather than a duration flight.”

  “You mean,” said Naydrad with an impatient ruffling of its fur, “that nobody expected us to be fighting an interspecies war with an ambulance ship. How long have we got?”

  “Forty-six hours of full shield deployment,” it replied, “after which we’ll have to lift out of here, or remain unprotected until someone rescues us. I shall explain the tactical situation as it unfolds.…”

  But they didn’t need the other’s continuous evaluation and commentary because they could see everything that was happening for themselves.

  The three ships from the other side of the island came into sight, hugging the shoreline and beaching themselves in the spaces between the first three. All six vessels dropped their landing ramps and opened the upper sail-shields where, Prilicla knew from previous observations, the gliders would be launched. There was no other visible activity and very little intership conversation. This was probably due, the captain thought, to all of the battle orders having already being issued so that they were awaiting only the signal to begin. The nearest six-unit fleet, all its sail-shields deployed to catch the wind off the sea, was approaching fast in line-abreast formation. Just above the horizon beyond them, at about fifty degrees lateral separation, two more high-flying gliders were performing signal aerobatics for three more fleets which totaled fifteen units. They were still below the horizon and would not, the captain estimated, arrive until early the next day.

  The six latest arrivals found gaps in which to come aground and they, too, closed their sail-shields apart from a few ventilation openings, and lowered their landing ramps. The beach was becoming really crowded, Prilicla thought, so that Terragar had disappeared from sight behind a line of giant, greenish-brown mollusck. There came the sound of the senior spiders on each ship using their speaking trumpets, followed by a lengthening silence.

  “I don’t think we’ll see any action today,” said the captain. “Plainly they are waiting for the other fifteen ships to arrive before attacking us.… Oops, I stand corrected.”

  Spiders were crawling down the landing ramps of every ship to begin forming into lines on the dry sand above the water’s edge. All of them were armed with crossbows and, in addition
, eight of them carried between them what looked like two heavy battering rams with sharply tapering points. Simultaneously gliders were being launched on the seaward side, two from each ship.

  They climbed slowly and heavily into the wind off the sea, and only when they made slow, banking turns towards the beach to take advantage of the thermals rising from the hot sand was it possible to see that the gliders carried passengers as well as pilots and that both were armed with crossbows.

  The aircraft continued to gain height slowly and steadily while the ground forces deployed three-deep into a crescent formation, with the battering rams placed front and center, before advancing on the med station and watching patients.

  The captain’s voice returned, giving orders rather than a commentary.

  “Dodds,” it said briskly, “shoot a couple of flares inland and drag them along the perimeter. The vegetation has dried out since last time so be careful not to start a major fire, just give me a line of burning bushes and smoke. There’s no sign of an attack developing from that quarter but I want to put them off the idea in case they burn themselves.”

  “Sir,” said Haslam, “shall I whip up another sandstorm on the beach?”

  “Negative,” it replied, “there’s no point in wasting the power. Last time we didn’t want them to hit the meteorite shield, but they found out about it when they were shooting at Murchison and Prilicla. But have your tractors ready just in case. Dr. Prilicla.”

  “Yes, friend Fletcher,” he said.

  “There is no risk to your patients out there,” it went on, “because there is no way that the spiders can get through our shield, but I don’t know what they might do to themselves while they’re trying. It could be visually unpleasant, so I advise moving them indoors before…”

  The captain’s next few words were drowned by a wail of protest and accompanying emotional radiation.

  “Thank you for the suggestion, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, “but I am receiving strong vocal and emotional objections from my patients and staff, all of whom would prefer to see the action at first hand.”

  “Bloodthirsty savages,” said the captain dryly, “and I’m not talking about the spiders.”

  There were twelve ships drawn up along the beach, each one carrying two gliders and a crew complement of anything up to two hundred. The bright yellow sand in front of the station was disappearing under the brownish-green bodies of over two thousand advancing spiders and, if it hadn’t been for the knowledge that the meteorite shield made them invulnerable, it would have been a terrifying sight as the spiders halted about fifty meters from the shield and readied their crossbows. Apart from the faint whisper of glider slipstreams as they circled and climbed above the station, there was utter silence. Plainly, all the necessary orders had already been given and they were awaiting only the signal to attack.

  “This is stupid,” said Murchison from her position among the medical team grouped around and below him. “They aren’t going to get anywhere with this attack so why don’t they just forget it and go home? After all, we haven’t hurt them in any way and we’re trying hard not to, but if this foolishness goes on, someone is sure to come to grief.”

  “We have hurt them, friend Murchison,” said Prilicla, “but not physically or in any other way we can understand at present. Maybe we are horrible creatures from the sky, the forerunners of more to come, who are invading their land. That is reason enough, but I have the feeling there is another one. A large number of their people are close enough to give me an emotional reading. For some reason they feel hatred, revulsion, and loathing for us. The feeling is intense and it is shared by all of them.”

  “I can’t believe that, sir,” Murchison protested. “When I was taken onto that ship there was physical contact with the spider captain who treated me well, considering the situation. It showed intelligence and intense curiosity. Maybe it was a scientist of some kind with its feelings under strict control. I don’t have an empathic faculty like yours, but if it had been feeling hatred and revulsion as well as curiosity I’m sure I would have felt it. My feeling now is that since my escape, we may have done something to make them really hate us.”

  Before he could reply, Naydrad curved its body into a flat L so that its narrow head was pointing vertically upwards and said, “Even at the beginning of a battle their pilots like to show off. Look at that.”

  At an altitude of about three hundred meters the gliders that had been climbing singly or in small, random groups above the full width of the beach had come together into a wide, circular formation. For a few moments they circled nose-to-tail like the star performers in an aerial display, then they banked inwards in unison, tightening the circle until they were directly above the med-station buildings and the watchers. The captain’s voice returned.

  “Nice coordination,” it said approvingly, “but I don’t think they’re showing off. The pilots and passengers are unlimbering their crossbows with the idea, I’d say, of shooting straight down at you. They probably figure that the bolts will have more penetration with the gravity assist of a three-hundred-meter fall. It’s a sensible idea but, not knowing how our shield works, completely wrong.… Now what the hell are they doing?”

  One of the gliders had rolled into a near-vertical bank, tightening its circle and descending, sideslipping off height as it came. It was followed quickly by another three and then suddenly all of the aircraft were spiraling down towards them.

  “Oh, no!” said the captain, answering its own question. “Because their crossbow bolts were stopped at ground level, they think the shield is a wall surrounding us instead of a protective hemisphere. They’re going to crash into an invisible wall at full … Haslam, Dodds, deploy your tractors, wide focus and low power in pressor node. Try not to wreck their gliders, just fend them off before they hit it.”

  “Sir,” Haslam protested, “I need a few seconds to focus on every target.…”

  “And there are too many targets,” Dodds joined in.

  “Do what you can—” the captain had time to say before the first glider crashed into the curving invisible surface of the shield.

  It looked as if the aircraft had broken up and collapsed into a loose ball of wreckage in midair without any apparent cause. Both occupants were entangled in the structure as it tumbled along the frictionless surface of the shield towards the ground. The second pilot, guessing that some strange weapon was being used against them, banked sharply in an attempt to climb up and away. But one wing struck the shield, crumpled, and its main spar penetrated the fuselage. The aircraft spun heavily into the frictionless surface and the passenger was thrown free before its pilot and the crippled glider began to slip groundwards at an accelerating rate.

  “Haslam, Dodds, grab them,” said the captain sharply. “Ease them down gently. Right, Doctor?”

  “You’re reading our minds, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla; then, “Friend Naydrad, instruct…”

  The fall of the first glider was checked about five meters from the ground and eased down so gently that it barely disturbed the sand, but the second one was caught two meters up so that its speed and impact were only slightly diminished.

  “… Instruct the robots to return all patients to recovery at once,” Prilicla went on. For a moment he stared at the semicircle of waiting spiders that had begun to edge closer while he tried to maintain stable hovering flight in spite of the almost physical impact of their emotional hostility. He made a quick, mental calculation and spoke.

  “Friend Fletcher,” he said, “will you please increase the…”

  “The diameter of the meteorite shield by, I would estimate, ten metres,” the captain broke in. “Am I still reading your mind, Doctor?”

  “You are, friend Fletcher,” he replied, looking up.

  The perfect, circular formation of the attacking gliders had broken up in disorder and the individual aircraft were scattering wildly and trying to regain height, all except two which had collided over an unshielded are
a of beach. They had each locked one of their wings together so that they were rotating around their common center of gravity and descending in an uncontrolled flat spin. Their rate of descent was fairly slow so that the spiders under them had time to scurry clear of the point of impact. They would hit too far away and there would be too many uninjured and angry spiders in the area between for him to risk extending the shield farther to try for a medical rescue. He hoped their friends would be able to take care of them and relieve his team of the responsibility.

  “Prepare for incoming casualties,” he said briskly. “Four patients, hostile and noncooperative requiring physical restraint. Physiological classification GKSD with no prior medical data on file. Impact trauma is expected with probable external and internal thoracic damage, extensive limb fracturing, and associated surface lesions. I will assess and assign the treatment priorities. Naydrad, send the antigravity litters and rescue equipment. The rest of you, let’s go.”

  He flew towards the wreckage of the first glider but Murchison, sprinting across the sand on its long; shapely Earth-human legs, reached it seconds before he did. The litter with the rescue gear came a close third.

  “Both casualties are deeply unconscious and pose no present danger,” he said, “or future danger, provided you get rid of those weapons. Do you need Danalta to assist?”

  Murchison shook its head. He could feel its concern for the casualties, its excitement at being presented with a new professional challenge and a flash of anger as it pulled the two crossbows and quivers from the wreckage and threw them with unnecessary force through the one-way protective shield at the surrounding spiders. It said angrily, “For you two bloody idiots the war is over. Sorry, sir, my mind was wandering. These two are badly entangled in wreckage with several limbs trapped, and one thorax has been transfixed by a wing spar. Rather than cut them free here and transfer them to litters, I feel sure that there would be less trauma involved if we lifted them, wreckage and all, with a tractor beam and placed them close to the treatment-bay entrance. That way we’ll reduce the risk of compounding their injuries before treatment.”