"Identify yourself, please." The quiet words from the speaker in no
way appeared to coincide with the picture on the screen. The spacer
that had matched their orbit over Dis had recently been a freighter.
A quick conversion had tacked the hulking shape of a primary weapons
turret on top of her hull. The black disc of the immense muzzle
pointed squarely at them. Ihjel switched open the ship-to-ship
communication channel.
"This is Ihjel. Retinal pattern 490-BJ4-67--which is also the code
that is supposed to get me through your blockade. Do you want to
check that pattern?"
"There will be no need, thank you. If you will turn on your recorder
I have a message relayed to you from Prime-four."
"Recording and out," Ihjel said. "Damn! Trouble already, and four
days to blowup. Prime-four is our headquarters on Dis. This ship
carries a cover cargo so we can land at the spaceport. This is
probably a change of plan and I don't like the smell of it."
There was something behind Ihjel's grumbling this time, and without
conscious effort Brion could sense the chilling touch of the other
man's _angst_. Trouble was waiting for them on the planet below.
When the message was typed by the decoder Ihjel hovered over it,
reading each word as it appeared on the paper. When it was finished
he only snorted and went below to the galley. Brion pulled the
message out of the machine and read it.
IHJEL IHJEL IHJEL SPACEPORT LANDING DANGER NIGHT
LANDING PREFERABLE COORDINATES MAP 46 J92 MN75
REMOTE YOUR SHIP VION WILL MEET END END END
Dropping into the darkness was safe enough. It was done on
instruments, and the Disans were thought to have no detection
apparatus. The altimeter dials spun backwards to zero and a soft
vibration was the only indication they had landed. All of the cabin
lights were off except for the fluorescent glow of the instruments.
A white-speckled grey filled the infra-red screen, radiation from
the still warm sand and stone. There were no moving blips on it,
not the characteristic shape of a shielded atomic generator.
"We're here first," Ihjel said, opaqueing the ports and turning on
the cabin lights. They blinked at each other, faces damp with
perspiration.
"Must you have the ship this hot?" Lea asked, patting her forehead
with an already sodden kerchief. Stripped of her heavier clothing,
she looked even tinier to Brion. But the thin cloth tunic--reaching
barely halfway to her knees--concealed very little. Small she may
have appeared to him: unfeminine she was not. Her breasts were full
and high, her waist tiny enough to offset the outward curve of her
hips.
"Shall I turn around so you can stare at the back too?" she asked
Brion. Five days' experience had taught him that this type of remark
was best ignored. It only became worse if he tried to make an
intelligent answer.
"Dis is hotter than this cabin," he said, changing the subject.
"By raising the interior temperature we can at least prevent any
sudden shock when we go out--"
"I know the theory--but it doesn't stop me from sweating," she said
curtly.
"Best thing you can do is sweat." Ihjel said. He looked like a
glistening captive balloon in shorts. Finishing a bottle of beer,
he took another from the freezer. "Have a beer."
"No, thank you. I'm afraid it would dissolve the last shreds of
tissue and my kidneys would float completely away. On Earth we
never--"
"Get Professor Morees' luggage for her," Ihjel interrupted. "Vion's
coming, there's his signal. I'm sending this ship up before any of
the locals spot it."
When he cracked the outer port the puff of air struck them like the
exhaust from a furnace, dry and hot as a tongue of flame. Brion
heard Lea's gasp in the darkness. She stumbled down the ramp and he
followed her slowly, careful of the weight of packs and equipment he
carried. The sand, still hot from the day, burned through his boots.
Ihjel came last, the remote-control unit in his hand. As soon as
they were clear he activated it and the ramp slipped back like a
giant tongue. As soon as the lock had swung shut, the ship lifted
and drifted upwards silently towards its orbit, a shrinking darkness
against the stars.
There was just enough starlight to see the sandy wastes around them,
as wave-filled as a petrified sea. The dark shape of a sand car drew
up over a dune and hummed to a stop. When the door opened Ihjel
stepped towards it and everything happened at once.
Ihjel broke into a blue nimbus of crackling flame, his skin
blackening, charred. He was dead in an instant. A second pillar of
flame bloomed next to the car, and a choking scream was cut off at
the moment it began. Ihjel died silently.
Brion was diving even as the electrical discharges still crackled in
the air. The boxes and packs dropped from him and he slammed against
Lea, knocking her to the ground. He hoped she had the sense to stay
there and be quiet. This was his only conscious thought, the rest
was reflex. He was rolling over and over as fast as he could.
The spitting electrical flames flared again, playing over the
bundles of luggage he had dropped. This time Brion was expecting it,
pressed flat on the ground a short distance away. He was facing the
darkness away from the sand car and saw the brief, blue glow of the
ion-rifle discharge. His own gun was in his hand. When Ihjel had
given him the missile weapon he had asked no questions, but had just
strapped it on. There had been no thought that he would need it this
quickly. Holding it firmly before him in both hands, he let his
body aim at the spot where the glow had been. A whiplash of
explosive slugs ripped the night air. They found their target and
something thrashed voicelessly and died.
In the brief instant after he fired, a jarring weight landed on his
back and a line of fire circled his throat. Normally he fought with
a calm mind, with no thoughts other than of the contest. But Ihjel,
a friend, a man of Anvhar, had died a few seconds before, and Brion
found himself welcoming this physical violence and pain.
There are many foolish and dangerous things that can be done, such
as smoking next to high-octane fuel and putting fingers into
electrical sockets. Just as dangerous, and equally deadly, is
physically attacking a Winner of the Twenties.
Two men hit Brion together, though this made very little difference.
The first died suddenly as hands like steel claws found his neck and
in a single spasmodic contraction did such damage to the large blood
vessels there that they burst and tiny hemorrhages filled his brain.
The second man had time for a single scream, though he died just as
swiftly when those hands closed on his larynx.
Running in a crouch, partially on his knuckles, Brion swiftly made
a circle of the area, gun ready. There were no others. Only when
he touched the softness of Lea's body did the blood anger seep from
him. He was suddenly aware of the pain and fatigue, the sweat
soaking his body and the breath rasping in his throat. Holstering
the gun, he ran light fingers over her skull, finding a bruised spot
on one temple. Her chest was rising and falling regularly. She had
struck her head when he pushed her. It had undoubtedly saved her
life.
Sitting down suddenly, he let his body relax, breathing deeply.
Everything was a little better now, except for the pain at his
throat. His fingers found a thin strand on the side of his neck with
a knobby weight on the end. There was another weight on his other
shoulder and a thin line of pain across his neck. When he pulled on
them both, the strangler's cord came away in his hand. It was thin
fiber, strong as a wire. When it had been pulled around his neck it
had sliced the surface skin and flesh like a knife, halted only by
the corded bands of muscle below. Brion threw it from him, into the
darkness where it had come from.
He could think again, and he carefully kept his thoughts from the
men he had killed. Knowing it was useless, he went to Ihjel's body.
A single touch of the scorched flesh was enough. Behind him Lea
moaned with returning consciousness and he hurried on to the sand
car, stepping over the charred body outside the door. The driver
slumped, dead, killed perhaps by the same strangling cord that had
sunk into Brion's throat. He laid the man gently on the sand and
closed the lids over the staring horror of the eyes. There was a
canteen in the car and he brought it back to Lea.
"My head--I've hurt my head," she said groggily.
"Just a bruise," he reassured her. "Drink some of this water and
you'll soon feel better. Lie back. Everything's over for the moment
and you can rest."
"Ihjel's dead!" Lea said with sudden shocked memory. "They've killed
him! What's happened?" she tensed, tried to rise, and he pressed her
back gently.
"I'll tell you everything. Just don't try to get up yet. There was
an ambush and they killed Vion and the driver of the sand car, as
well as Ihjel. Three men did it and they're all dead now too. I
don't think there are any more around, but if there are I'll hear
them coming. We're just going to wait a few minutes until you feel
better, then we're getting out of here in the car."
"Bring the ship down!" There was a thin note of hysteria in her
voice. "We can't stay here alone. We don't know where to go or what
to do. With Ihjel dead, the whole thing's spoiled. We have to get
out...."
There are some things that can't sound gentle, no matter how gently
they are said. This was one of them. "I'm sorry, Lea, but the ship
is out of our reach right now. Ihjel was killed with an ion gun and
it fused the control unit into a solid lump. We must take the car
and get to the city. We'll do it now. See if you can stand up--I'll
help you."
She rose, not saying anything, and as they walked towards the car
a single, reddish moon cleared the hills behind them. In its light
Brion saw a dark line bisecting the rear panel of the sand car. He
stopped abruptly. "What's the matter?" Lea asked.
The unlocked engine cover could have only one significance and he
pushed it open, knowing in advance what he would see. The attackers
had been very thorough and fast. In the short time available to them
they had killed the driver and the car as well. Ruddy light shone on
torn wires, ripped out connections. Repair would be impossible.
"I think we'll have to walk," he told her, trying to keep the gloom
out of his voice. "This spot is roughly a hundred and fifty
kilometres from the city of Hovedstad, where we have to go.
We should be able to--"
"We're going to die. We can't walk anywhere. This whole planet is a
death trap. Let's get back in the ship!" The shrillness of hysteria
was at the edge of her voice, as well as a subtle slurring of
sounds.
Brion didn't try to reason with her or bother to explain. She had a
concussion from the blow, that much was obvious. He had her sit and
rest while he made what preparations he could for the long walk.
Clothing first. With each passing minute the desert air was growing
colder as the day's heat ebbed away. Lea was beginning to shiver,
and he took some heavier clothing from her charred bag and made her
pull it on over her light tunic. There was little else that was
worth carrying--the canteen from the car and a first-aid kit he
found in one of the compartments. There were no maps and no radio.
Navigation was obviously done by compass on this almost featureless
desert. The car was equipped with an electrically operated
gyrocompass, of no use to him now. But he did use it to check the
direction of Hovedstad, as he remembered it from the map, and found
it lined up perfectly with the tracks the car had cut into the
sand. It had come directly from the city. They could find their way
by back-tracking.
Time was slipping away. He would have liked to bury Ihjel and the
men from the car, but the night hours were too valuable to be
wasted. The best he could do was put the three corpses in the car,
for protection from the Disan animals. He locked the door and threw
the key as far as he could into the blackness. Lea had slipped into
a restless sleep and he carefully shook her awake.
"Come," Brion said. "We have a little walking to do."