Space Trap

by Juanita Coulson

  “Rapids,” he speculated worriedly.

  Thayenta twisted, facing the right bank of the stream. Her posture was rigid, her eyes narrowed as she bore down on telepathic steering procedures. The raft floated to the right, heading for safe, quiet waters, but ever so slowly.

  As one, R.C. and Ken gauged the depth and current of the stream. Not trusting Thayenta to defeat the rapids ahead, the two men jumped off the raft.

  The water came up to their knees, and wasn’t as cold as Ken had expected. He and the pilot seized the raft on either side, hand steering it toward the bank.

  With a startled squeal, Thayenta sat down in an ungraceful sprawl. Outraged, she gathered herself, straightening a rumpled pink sleeve and her leafy tunic skirt. “Not necessary!” she complained, petulant. “Not necessary. I am in control of the raft.”

  “We just want to guarantee its safety,” explained Ken.

  The alien woman clutched the edge of the raft as the men guided it toward a backwater. While she’d been completely confident using telepathic skills, she obviously didn’t trust the humans’ muscle power. Fair enough, Ken thought, suppressing a laugh; he didn’t entirely trust telepathy to keep them from smashing into the rocks.

  The raft beached among a stand of blue reeds, overhung with more of the ubiquitous pink willows. Ken clambered up onto the bank, and as Thayenta stood up, he held her about the waist and swung her onto dry land. She was still piqued. “You did not need to do that …” Then she closed a hand over the translator, muffling its operation. A torrent of the M’Nae language battered at the men’s ears, none of it seemingly complimentary.

  Ken grinned. “Telepath or not, I recognize a woman scorned. R.C., I think we hurt her feelings.”

  “We might have kept drier if we’d let her do the driving,” the pilot admitted, brushing broken reeds off his fatigue pants and boots. “But I’m just as happy we did things our way, for a change.”

  It was a blunt reminder of recent events, when Ken and R.C. had been puppets at the mercy of the M’Nae. Yes, it had been satisfying to wrestle the raft to shore by their own, non-telephatic, powers.

  At first Thayenta refused to be mollified. But finally her black eyes lost their snappish glare. Shyly, she touched fingertips with Ken. She seemed startled when he clasped her hand firmly, human fashion.

  “We’ve been moving southwest,” R.C. decided, squinting at NE 592’s star.

  Ken looked back at the purplish mist. “We crashed at one side of that blurry area and maybe came out the other. That’s about fifty kilometers.”

  “Part of which constitutes ‘thirty jarda-ans’,” R.C. added.

  Thayenta pointed along the bank, downstream. “That way,” she said in Terran, without using the translator.

  “She’s really bright, R.C.,” Ken commented. “Thayenta obviously has a gift for languages. The ‘death-bringers’ are directly downstream. I would ask how far, but we would probably get the answer in ‘jarda-ans’,” he added ruefully.

  Thayenta pursed her lips and resorted to the translator, reluctantly. “The death-bringers are many, and they move about.” Then Ken felt a peculiar sensation — someone was tiptoeing through his brain. There was no resemblance to the telepathic assault Briv had flung at the Surveymen. Whatever Thayenta was hunting for, she gave up. The mental probing stopped, and she spoke again in Terran. “Afraid.”

  Concerned, Ken said, “Afraid of what? Things will be different now. We’re with you. We’ll straighten this out. It won’t be like it was when your first ambassador met them.”

  He was offering a lot more than he should, making guarantees he had little power to carry out. But Thayenta’s fear was genuine, and Ken wanted very much to reassure her.

  “They probably have guards posted,” R.C. remarked, and Ken agreed, eyeing Thayenta for confirmation.

  She made a valiant effort to imitate a human nod, not jerking her head sideways in the M’Nae style but bringing her chin straight down. “Near the place where the death-bringers sleep.”

  “A village,” Ken speculated. “I think I saw one from space, just before we lost our sensors.”

  “Did you?” R.C. lifted an eyebrow. “They’ve been busy, haven’t they? A village. All right. Thayenta, give us plenty of warning when we get close to any outposts. We don’t want to stumble into them blindly.”

  They followed Thayenta along the banks, heading downstream. There was no path but enough beaten and bare patches surfaced amid the grass to give them easy walking. Ken spent one thoughtful look on the beached raft before it was left behind. Could Thayenta power it upstream? He liked having a means of escape handy.

  Quickly memorizing landmarks, Ken tried to frame the question for Thayenta. “Could you propel that raft back where we came from? I mean, can you move things with your mind — like you opened the door to my cell?”

  “Not … not,” and she was forced to resort to the translator again. “Not as adept as Briv.”

  An apprentice. She’d made a big admission, conceding her own weakness. Ken remembered that he had never caught Thayenta engaging in teleportation.

  She sensed his thoughts before he expressed them, and revealed a bit more of herself. “I am kuu-a — student. From the Yen people. We do not move things. I am —” and Thayenta disgustedly clapped her hand over the translator again. “I am speaker.”

  “A linguist,” Ken guessed, elated. “That explains why she’s learning Terran so fast.”

  “Not fast enough,” R.C. groused. “It’s like pulling teeth to get solid facts.”

  “We don’t want to get her into trouble with her own people,” Ken said sharply. “If I was in enemy custody and they were pumping me, you’d be very displeased if I told anyone anything.”

  “Right,” R.C. said ominously.

  “She’s doing her best to cooperate without betraying the M’Nae,” Ken insisted.

  “I see that. But you have to see something, Ken,” and the pilot spoke very seriously. “This could be a full-scale war —”

  Five men leapt out from behind boulders and trees, launching themselves at the three travellers.

  They shouted wordlessly, faces contorted, and charged like screaming savages, brandishing clubs.

  Ken thrust Thayenta behind him and threw up an arm to fend off a cudgel blow. He got hit high and low by two men, but they didn’t use their clubs. Instead they tackled him, bowling him back and over on the purplish grass.

  Ken defended himself desperately, slamming a fist into one man’s face, gaining himself a few centimeters to wriggle.

  “Quit it, you stupid bastard!” one man protested. “Get her! Quick!”

  Ken wrestled with the thug clutching his legs, and the second man jumped at Thayenta.

  “Don’t!” Ken roared. “You kill her and you’re dead.”

  His threat had some effect. The man had started to swing the club at Thayenta. During his mid-air pause, she shrieked and stumbled through the grass, running from him.

  It was no contest. In a couple of strides, the club wielder cut off Thayenta’s escape easily. But this time he swung a fist instead of the club.

  Thayenta’s black eyes rolled and she crumpled into a pitiful heap at her attacker’s feet.

  Enraged, Ken flailed free of his attacker and rushed furiously at the man who had struck down Thayenta.

  He didn’t make it. Both men dived on him, and a third added his weight. Ken was solid and in good condition, but numbers told. Seething with frustration and fury, he wheeled and struggled, but the situation was hopeless.

  R.C., a lightweight and carrying twenty-five extra years, was held immobile by the other two thugs. The pilot looked as helpless and angered as Ken.

  They were ambushed! They had been snared like raw recruits.

  Why hadn’t Thayenta warned them?

  Ken stared anxiously at the woman. She was breathing, but unconscious. A dark swelling had started on that jewel-skin, just under her right eye.

  “Why the hell di
d you hit her?” Ken shouted. “She isn’t armed. What are you cretins using for brains?”

  “Ken.” R.C. threw him a veiled warning, shutting off Ken’s tirade.

  Barely in control of his temper, Ken said levelly, “She’s an ambassador. You might have treated her like one.”

  “Ambassador?” and one of the thugs guffawed crudely. But the others began having second thoughts.

  “The Chief’ll take care of it,” they decided, relieved to turn the whole matter over to an authority they plainly respected. “Come on. Let’s get movin’ before any more o’ those things show.”

  “You’re not going to leave her here,” Ken said menacingly. He was in no position to enforce his demand, but he put enough cold anger into his voice to win his case.

  The club wielders looked at each other uncertainly. “Okay. We’d better take her along.”

  One man turned spokesman, weakly apologizing to Ken and R.C. “We wasn’t sure you guys was Terrans. Sorry for the rough stuff. Don’t worry about the female. She ain’t hurt bad. Look, we’ll take you to see our Chief. He’ll get this straightened out.”

  “Agreed,” R.C. said in a cool tone. He and Ken shook off restraining hands and Ken hurried over to Thayenta, feeling her pulse. R.C. added, “Only on condition the woman’s not mistreated further. Get that clear right now.”

  They should have laughed at him. The Surveymen were weaponless and outnumbered. But R.C. Zachary had earned his reputation. That voice of command had been polished for years. The ambushers conferred among themselves, more and more unsure of their ground. They finally nodded, and one of them came to Thayenta, starting to grab her ankles.

  Ken knocked the man aside. “Keep your hands off her. You’ve done enough damage.” He gathered the woman in his arms and stood up.

  After a momentary hesitation, their captors herded them downstream along the same unmarked path the trio had been following minutes earlier.

  Ken glanced at Thayenta. What did variations in alien coloring indicate? He couldn’t tell if she was badly hurt or just stunned. Judging by human standards, her pulse had felt light and rapid, but perhaps it was normal for a M’Nae. The lump on Thayenta’s cheek had already ripened into an ugly bruise, and Ken vowed that it would be repaid, with interest.

  For now, there was nothing to do but shuffle along in R.C.’s wake; one club wielder walked ahead, two flanked the captives, and two more brought up the rear. There was no chance to make a break for it.

  Thayenta was very light, probably much less than fifty kilos. He wouldn’t tire easily, carrying her. But Ken had a more urgent reason for hoping they reached their destination quickly — there might be medical aid there for Thayenta.

  Ken wondered if the men were indicative of the settlement as a whole. If so, no wonder the initial clash between humans and M’Nae had occurred.

  Again he wondered why Thayenta hadn’t warned them of the ambush. R.C. had specifically asked her to give them plenty of time, yet they’d been caught completely off-guard.

  The answer came to him in a flash of intuition. Brute reactions. Briv let go of those telepathic claws when Ken had gone after him in unthinking rage. Possibly the M’Nae could cope with human minds only on a certain level. When a man descended to a savage state, or was too stupid to think deeply like these club wielders, the M’Nae’s telepathic abilities were hobbled.

  Thayenta was not able to teleport herself. There were a lot of different abilities among the M’Nae, and Ken had no means of discerning what they were and what range they had.

  What about Briv? Was he telepathically watching them right now? Wouldn’t he have stopped this attack — communicated a warning to Thayenta — if he could have? Ken thought of Briv’s bony face and unforgiving manner. How could he guess what motivated the M’Nae leader? Briv wasn’t operating on human moral standards. For all Ken could tell, Briv might be using Thayenta and the Surveymen as guinea pigs — throwing them to the “death-bringers” to see what would happen.

  The captives and their escort wended their way around a clump of pink and purple foliage that jogged away from some rapids. The rapids broadened and danced downhill toward spectacular falls.

  Suddenly a man stepped out of a hiding place amid the willows and approached the group. “What you doing off-station? The Chief told you to —”

  “We got something for him.” The lead club wielder pointed to Ken, R.C., and Thayenta. “A real prize. Better tell him.”

  “Right. He’s over at this side of the valley, anyway, checking on the water wheel.” The trail guard plucked at his belt and Ken stared in shock. The man was using a small personal communicator: standard government issue.

  Stolen from a government warehouse? Was it part of a large quantity of supplies to stock a stolen Class-D space ship?

  As their captors urged them farther along the trail, the man at the way post spoke urgently into the communicator, notifying someone ahead of their approach.

  *

  The vegetation thinned and the trees stood farther apart now. Ken got a clear view as they came to a turn in the trail, out over a grassy valley nestled between two hill ranges. He momentarily came to a stop, gawking.

  His glimpse from space had been right on target. A half-completed colony settlement was in the process of being born. Dwellings and barns and sheds stood surrounded by fields where men and women sweated with primitive farm tools, planting crops.

  One of the guards tried to hurry Ken forward. He excused his stop by lifting Thayenta slightly in his arms to get a better grip on her slender body. It gave him a few more seconds to peruse the scene below.

  Except for the crude tools and the nature of the log buildings, this could have been any pioneer colony. If things had gone on schedule, sometime ten years in the future, a Second Survey would have approved this world for colonization.

  But it was here now. Snugly enclosed in the valley, her people were busily hacking out their future: an agricultural Eden.

  The price had come high. There was a scar on Eden’s face. A deep gouge traversed the valley’s length, paralleling the creek that supplied the village. The gouge shot out the far end of the valley, on to the horizon and out of sight. Ken guessed that it was an entry gouge, left by a Class-D spaceship scraping an abrasion across the planet’s skin. The two-man Survey ship had left a similar, smaller scratch on NE 592. A Class-D could swallow the Survey ship whole. Ken could make a visual estimate of that, because the huge interstellar craft had come to rest against the valley’s back wall, her nose rammed halfway up to the crest.

  “Move along, now,” and a club nudged Ken’s shoulder.

  Ken growled an oath and Thayenta stirred, moaning softly, before lapsing back into unconsciousness. As Ken started forward, the man leading them shouted, “Hold it! Here comes The Chief.”

  A lanky figure, climbing a footpath beside the falls, hurried past a wooden water wheel and an earthen dam.

  R.C. watched the man’s approach narrowly. The pilot seemed as unfriendly as Briv, contemplating the advance of a human enemy. Such undisguised animosity from the veteran pilot startled Ken. R.C.’s emotions were showing badly, and he bore no resemblance to an “ambassador.”

  Ken looked around, hoping the club wielders might be relaxing their guard. They were, but that wasn’t much comfort. They were situated on one narrow, completely blocked trail. Three-meters-high boulders were on Ken’s right, and a waterfall fell to the left. Chances for an escape attempt were poor, to say the least. And right now the pilot’s full attention was directed toward the man coming to meet them.

  “Chief, we caught these —” the spokesman for the club wielders began proudly.

  “Yes, yes. Good work. Larribee relayed the message,” the “Chief” replied, shutting off the braggart’s report. The man paused at the top of the waterfall path, staring curiously at R.C. and Ken and Thayenta.

  As tall and fierce-looking as Briv, he was scarcely even winded after that climb. The face, the physique, the post
ure all were achingly familiar to Ken, though he was positive he had never met this man in his life. Perhaps it was the clothes — standard issue military fatigues with the communicator and needler the man wore at his belt. Illegal supplies, to match an illegal colony.

  Ken couldn’t quite put his finger on a name, but he had seen the face many times. Acne scars pitted a craggy jawline; protruberant eyes flanked a beak of a nose. He had a lion’s share of kinky, graying hair. This man’s parents had belonged to an old school; they hadn’t believed in genetic engineering to ensure physical attractiveness. The man was every centimeter their inheritor.

  “R.C.?” The Chief’s voice was strained with disbelief. “Is it really you, R.C.?”

  Zachary and his apprentice were at a disadvantage, but R.C.’s manner put them on equal ground with their captors. Zachary squared his shoulders and used that commanding tone to perfection. Ken could almost touch the man’s contempt. “Yes, it’s me. Did you think we wouldn’t find you, Noland?”

  Everything fell into place. In the pictures and solidopic images Ken had seen, the Chief’s face held the look of an eagle — as had R.C. Zachary’s portrait twenty-five years ago. Those two men were contemporaries. Members of the Academy’s first class, they’d shared an unquenchable drive to reach for the stars. They were men who had pioneered Earth’s leap out into the galaxy.

  Since Ken was a boy, Noland Eads had been one of his idols. It was an honored name, emblazoned on plaques, prominently featured in textbooks and learning tapes, identified along with R.C.’s in Earth Central’s “Outward Bound” Pioneer Hall.

  Meeting this hero wasn’t at all what Ken had expected.

  CHAPTER 8

  A jovial grin split Eads’ homely face as he slapped R.C.’s biceps. “I’ll be damned! It is you, R.C.! It must be … what? Five years? You haven’t changed a bit, you old curmudgeon,” and he playfully prodded the shorter man’s ribs.