THE COSMIC LOOTERS
By Alexander Blade
Wyatt knew his situation was desperate: he
couldn't stop the alien invasion, and even if
he warned Earth--nobody would believe him!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
February 1958
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Duncan Wyatt sprang up, grabbed his gun and started toward the door
before he had his eyes properly open. His ears were ringing with the
explosive roar that had awakened him and the pre-fab shack still
quivered in the shock wave.
He thought the Third World War had started.
He crouched in the doorway and peered out onto the mesa. The unorthodox
shape of the experimental ultra-tight-beam transmitter loomed over him,
black against the star-blazing New Mexican sky, bearing a red star of
its own to warn low-flying planes. He was all alone here. His partner,
Bannister, had flown out to the Coast to oversee the making of new
components for a projected improvement in design. Wyatt had never felt
lonely before, even in the total solitude of the mesa top with nothing
around it but the vast impersonals of sky and desert, sun and wind. Now
he did feel lonely, and scared. He wondered where the bomb had dropped.
He couldn't see anything, so he went out and around the corner of the
shack, keeping low and sticking tight to the wall.
Now he could see a larger area of the mesa, softly but almost
adequately lighted by the billion stars above the crystal-clear air.
He saw what it was that had fallen out of the sky.
It wasn't a bomb. It was a--plane? Call it a plane. Call it a
rotary-thrust flying wing. Call it anything you want to, it was there,
round and glimmering faintly against the drab rock. The boom and shock
that had shaken him out of his bunk must have been the result of the
thing pulling out of a steep dive at super-sonic speed.
He should have been relieved that this was so. Somehow Wyatt was not.
He had a feeling. It was such a crazy feeling that he could not believe
it, but he couldn't get rid of it either.
He stood still in the shadow by the corner of the shack and waited to
see what would happen next.
A light came on with blinding suddenness, shining from the center of
the queer plane. It showed up every pebble and stunted bush, every
grain of the rock, the sun-bitten pre-fab wall, himself in his sock
feet and rumpled khakis, standing stiffly with the gun in his hand.
A portion of the black outer rim of the round plane dropped down,
unfolding into a stair.
Wyatt shouted, "What is it? Who are you?" His voice was thin and small
in that vastness of windy air. "I have a gun," he shouted. "Come out
slowly, with your hands up!"
The words sounded ridiculous even while he was saying them. But he had
to put up some kind of a front, simply because he was scared. If he
didn't he would have had to turn and run away.
It was the damned round queer-looking plane. He was in a cold shaking
sweat waiting to see what came out of it.
When he did see he didn't believe it.
She stood in the aperture at the top of the narrow metal stair. Her
hands were raised just a little, so that he might be sure there was
no weapon in them. He thought she was smiling slightly. She had black
hair, black as the blackest shadow you could imagine, shorn close
around her head. She was dressed in black--soft boots, close-fitting
pants, wide belt with holster, severely plain shirt with a splotch
of gold on the front of each shoulder. Somehow he sensed that the
gold splotches were insignia, not decorations. He also sensed--from
something about the way she stood, the way she looked at him, the hard,
disciplined strength that underlay the splendid lines of her body--that
this woman was not like any of the women he had ever known, and that
probably the Third World War might have been easier to cope with.
She said, "There is no need to be afraid."
Her English sounded as though she had learned it by mathematical
formula, and in a hurry.
Wyatt said untruthfully, "I'm not afraid. Just cautious." He walked
out closer to the disc-shaped plane. The mesa rock was icy under his
socks, the wind was icy down his back, and there was a chill inside him
that was purely personal.
"Where do you come from?" he asked. "What do you want?"
* * * * *
She dropped her hands and came quickly down the stairs, apparently
satisfied that he was not going to shoot her.
"I haven't much time," she said. Her eyes were the color of pure
turquoise, startlingly bright, curiously tilted. She gave a swift
glance at the sky and then spoke urgently to Wyatt.
"Try to understand, to believe. Your world is going to be attacked. Not
tonight, but within a short time. I want you to take a warning to your
government, so that we may be prepared when the attack comes."
"I see," said Wyatt. He had a wild desire to laugh. He saw himself
going to Washington and telling various personages at the White House
and the Pentagon that a beautiful girl landed in a funny round ship and
told him the Earth was going to be attacked and so they should call out
the armed forces to be ready.
"They'd shoot me first," he muttered, "and then throw me in a padded
cell." He stepped closer to the girl. Her face was handsome, perfectly
human and perfectly alien at one and the same time. It was not a soft
face. It was used to decision and command. The red mouth, he thought,
would never pout or be petulant, but it could easily be cruel. "Who's
going to attack Earth? Who are you?"
She said impatiently, "It does not matter who I am, except that
I'm in a position to know what I'm saying. Listen. There is a huge
interstellar task force out there, working its way through this sector
of the galaxy, plundering as it goes. These fringe areas are too far
away from our center of power at Uryx--a star-system you never heard of
here--to make permanent conquest practical, so all we are interested in
is loot. Our advance scouts go far ahead of the main body. We scouts
have been here before. _I've_ been here before. Now I'm warning you.
The main force will be at Alpha Centauri when I return to it. When it
is finished there, Earth is next."
"I don't believe you," Wyatt said. But in spite of himself, he did.
He was close to the foot of the stair now, close enough almost to touch
the tall, slim girl with the black hair blowing around her forehead and
the brilliant, wary eyes. The strange ship loomed above them both.
Wyatt looked at it and shivered and gnawed his lip.
"Why are you warning me?" he said suddenly. "You're part of the force.
Why do you want to betray it?"
"I have my reasons," she said, "and they are good ones. But you
wouldn't understand them. In any case, the warning is true. Don't
question it."
She started to withdraw from him, up the metal steps.
"Wait," said Wyatt. "Nobody on earth would listen to me if I told them
that story. They'd only think I was crazy. Listen, if you really want
to have your warning taken seriously you'll have to go to Washington
yourself."
"That's impossible," she said curtly.
Again she started up the steps and again he stopped her.
"No," he said, and now he knew that he must not let her get away. As
wildly improbable, not to say insane, as this whole business was, she
was real and her ship was real, and wiser men than he should be handed
the responsibility of dealing with that reality.
"You and I together couldn't convince anybody by just talking," he
said. "The only thing that could is your ship. _That_ was never made on
Earth and they would know that. They could test it, examine it, prove
it isn't a fake, a hoax of any kind, and that's going to be hard--you
haven't any idea how hard."
* * * * *
He stepped onto the lowest step of the stair. "You've got to fly this
thing to Washington."
"I told you that's impossible," she said. "I've given you the warning;
you'll have to do what you can with it. Stand clear!"
She turned her back on him and sprang lightly through the aperture into
the ship.
Wyatt did not stop to think. He rushed up the stair after her and it
began to draw itself up as he did so, folding him under, so that he
thought he was going to have to jump clear or be crushed. There was a
whine of power from inside. Damn her, thought Wyatt, she doesn't care
if she kills me. He scrambled frantically up the tilting, flattening
rungs and caught the edge of the aperture and kicked himself forward
through it.
The panel that was sliding in to seal the opening caught him halfway
and held him in an agonizing grip. He cried out with pain and the fear
of being cut in two. He could see into the round cockpit now, with
the black-uniformed woman stopped in the act of sitting down at the
controls, her startled face turned toward him.
Then her expression became one of intense annoyance. Her hand moved
toward the weapon holstered at her waist. In the same instant a warning
bell rang and the sliding panel re-opened automatically. Wyatt lurched
the rest of the way through, sick and dizzy but knowing that this was
no time to indulge his symptoms. He was afraid to fire the gun he still
held clutched in his hand, even as a gesture of intimidation. The
cockpit was small and faced in metal. A ricocheting bullet could kill
either or both of them, or damage the control panel so that the craft
could not fly. So he threw the gun instead. It whizzed past her head
close enough to touch her hair, and in the second she was busy ducking
it he had crossed the tiny metal floor and grappled with her.
She did not scream or claw his face or tear at his hair or do any of
the things women customarily did. She fought, and she was strong as
spring steel. He held her wrist so that she could not get at the weapon
in her belt, and her free fist came up under his chin and made him see
stars. Then her knee got him in the pit of the belly. All Wyatt's ideas
of chivalry deserted him. He let go of her wrist and gambled that he
could knock her out before she could get the weapon, whatever it was,
out of its holster.
He won, but by a shamefully tiny margin. She sagged down and he
snatched the weapon himself and then retrieved his gun and stood
panting, feeling very shaky at the knees.
She shook her head, grunted, looked up at him with blazing eyes, and
started up all ready to come back and kill him.
He pointed her own weapon and his gun at her, using both hands.
"Mine will kill," he said. "I don't know what yours will do, but you
know." He motioned to the pilot's seat. "Get in there. We're flying to
Washington."
She gave him a wicked little smile with the sharp edge of her teeth and
did as he told her.
CHAPTER II
There were places for four beside the pilot, spaced around the circular
cockpit. Wyatt strapped himself into the seat nearest the girl. He
imagined the take-off would be something special, and he was braced
for it, but even the almost instantaneous transition from a state of
sitting still on the ground to one of shooting straight up into the sky
at a hell of a rate was hard to take. He jammed the gun into her back
between the shoulders and said,
"Not too high. We're not going to Alpha Centauri."
"There are commercial air lanes," she said irritably, "and military air
bases and radar installations, and ground-to-air missiles. Even in this
ship I couldn't guarantee to elude every one of them."
Wyatt considered that, uneasily aware that his gun was now largely a
bluff. He was not likely to use it on her, unless he wanted to come
down a lot faster than he went up, and she would know that. He said,
"All right, get up over the obstacles, but don't try anything too
clever. I'm a pretty good pilot and I could gamble on flying this thing
myself."
That was a flat lie, but he thought it might be worth telling.
The girl did not seem to be interested one way or another. The craft
continued to go straight up, whistling shrilly as it went, and then it
swerved around with surprising gentleness and headed east. Wyatt looked
out the small double-sealed window beside him.
The stars blinded him. They had ceased to twinkle, and they had grown
huge, and they had multiplied. The sky was no longer flat but deep and
endless, so that even as countless many stars as there were did not
crowd it. Far below there was a dark wrinkled rind like the edge of a
round cheese, and Wyatt knew that it was the Earth.
It was the most magnificent sight he had ever seen, and he wished
intensely that he was not seeing it. It was the final touch of insane
reality that made the whole wild nightmare consistent.
"I was just lying there minding my own business," Wyatt said bitterly,
turning away from the window. "Why did you have to pick on me?"
"You were obviously a technician, and it would require a technician to
grasp what I had to tell you. The others seem not to believe even when
they see."
"Others?" asked Wyatt startled by a new thought.
"Of course. How do you suppose we plan our attacks? How do you suppose
we learn the things we must know, including enough of the language
to be able to communicate with the people after the invasion? In the
normal course of events I would have considered you an especially
valuable find. The accessible ones have all been herders of animals or
fishermen or primitive tribesmen or poor wanderers, who could not tell
us much beyond their own language and their own calling."
"You mean," said Wyatt, "that if you hadn't decided to give me the
warning instead, you'd have kidnapped me? Taken me--" he nodded at the
window, "--out there? Or tried to?"
"Of course."
"Well," said Wyatt. "I'll be damned."
He was enraged, and more alarmed than ever. "Don't forget for a second
that I've got this gun in your back."
"I'm not likely to," she said in a curiously calm voice. "How are you
called?"
He told her.
"I am Brinna Halphard--Brinna the Dark, I think you would say."
It seemed a little ridiculous to say, How do you do? Wyatt grunted
uneasily and asked, "Why the sudden friendliness?"
"I'm a soldier, and I know it is impossible to win every skirmish. I've
learned to make the best of things."
"That's fine," said Wyatt, not trusting her for a minute. But he was
curious. "Are all women soldiers where you come from?"
"As many as wish to be. There is no difference made between the sexes,
only between individuals according to their abilities. There are many
women in the task force--pilots, technicians, officers, gunners,
ordinary troops."
"Nobody thinks a thing of it?"
"Why should they?"
Wyatt could not really think of any good reason, except that on Earth
they did.
Brinna reached for a panel at her right side and started to open it.
Instantly Wyatt was alert. "What are you doing there?"
"You want to go to Washington. Unless you can tell me the exact
coordinates yourself, I must have the computer work out a course."
"Okay," said Wyatt. "Open the panel, but slowly."
Behind it there was only a remarkable compact receptor-effector unit.
"You see?" she said. "Now if you will allow me--"
He allowed her. He asked, "Do you have a chart designation for
Washington already in that thing?"
"For everywhere in your world," said Brinna. "_Naturally._"
* * * * *
A chill went crawling down Wyatt's back. Some of the larger
implications of the situation were beginning to catch up with him.
Enemies had entered the skies of Earth, spying, charting. Enemies from
another star, so far away that Earth had never heard of it. Earthmen
had been kidnapped, the names of cities had been written down, plans
had been made. And somewhere out there, in the immense black and
fire-blazing gulf that surrounded Earth--not any longer as a protective
barrier but as a pathway for invasion--an alien fleet proceeded on its
way.
Wyatt stared in horror out the window and wondered how, even if all
Earth's defenses were mustered, she could fight off an attack by
an enemy so superior in technology that interstellar flight was a
commonplace.
"Brinna," he said, "what--" He started to turn his head toward her and
out of the tail of his eye he saw her hand move on the controls but it
was already too late to do anything. The plane went out from under him
sideways and the window tried to push itself through his head. Then he
was thrown the other way with a violence that nearly snapped his neck.
The seat belt cut into him and his arms flew out wildly. The gun was
pulled from his hand as by a powerful magnet. He yelled involuntarily
and then for the second time direction was reversed and his head
slammed into the window again and all the stars went out.
When he came to he had no weapon at all and his hands were securely
fastened to the back of the seat with his own belt. His head ached
abominably. "That was a dirty trick," he said. "Now I see why you made
that first turn so gentle--so I wouldn't know how fast this thing could
maneuver at right angles."
Brinna said, "Would you have expected me to give you a performance
sheet?"
"All right," he said sourly, hating her, hating the feeling of
helplessness and disadvantage, raging at the combination of
circumstances that had chosen him to grapple with a situation that no
one man could possibly have handled. "Where are we going now?"
"Back to where I found you. You'll have to get to Washington with the
warning some other way."
Wyatt groaned. "What do I have to do to make you understand? Nobody
will believe a word I say."
"It's your world," she said. "I can do no more than tell you what will
happen."
"You mean you _won't_ do any more," he said furiously. "What's your
game, anyway? If you really cared whether Earth is attacked or not
you'd make sure--"
A pair of little blue lights began to flash alternately at the left of
the control panel, accompanied by a shrill buzzing.
Brinna started. She said something in her own language that sounded
like a curse.
"What's the matter?" Wyatt asked.
"Trouble. Oh, not with the ship, that's only the communicator." She put
out her hand and at the same time she gave him a hard glare. "Just keep
quiet. Don't say anything at all, or you may only make things worse for
yourself."
She flipped a switch. The flashing and buzzing stopped and a man's
face appeared in a tiny screen. Wyatt could not see it too clearly
from his angle, but it seemed a not unlikeable face of which the chief
characteristics were strength and a sort of inner weariness. The man
spoke to Brinna and she answered him, and Wyatt could not understand a
word of what they said.
Some part of the conversation seemed to concern Wyatt himself. He
became more and more frantically uneasy. When the contact was broken
and the screen was blank again, he leaned forward against his bonds and
demanded, "What's all that about?"
Brinna nodded briefly toward the window. "Look out there." Her brows
were drawn down into a black angry bar and she seemed to be thinking
hard. Wyatt looked out the small window.
* * * * *
A second disc-shaped craft had joined them. It was about four hundred
feet away, keeping pace. Even while he looked at it the craft tilted,
showing a glowing pink center surrounded by the black outer ring, and
appeared to shoot away into the starry void.
Brinna followed it.
Wyatt said, "Hey. You said you were going to put me off on the mesa--"
She shook her head. "Not now. That's Makvern out there, the good
gray Makvern who would be suspicious of his own father. He knows
you're aboard. There is only one place I can take you." She pointed
expressively. "Out. If I tried to drop back down to Earth now I'd be in
front of a court-martial before breakfast."
She turned to face him. It seemed that she had done her thinking,
compensating for the sudden change in direction that Makvern's
appearance had necessitated.
"Listen," she said. "I'm the only hope you have of getting back to
Earth before the attack. If you tell anyone that I tried to pass on a
warning, that one hope will be gone. Do you understand me?"
"Perfectly," Wyatt said. He had been doing some thinking too. "I am
also your only hope of getting a warning to Earth before the invasion,
which you badly want to do not because you give a tinker's damn what
happens to Earth, but because of the effect you think it will have on
some deal of your own. So I guess in a sense we're partners, then?"
"You could say that." Her eyes were as bright and hard as two chips of
blue stone. She was as handsome a girl as Wyatt had ever seen, and she
scared the devil out of him. "Partners. Yes. But whatever my motives
may be they do not concern you, or Earth. And if I do not succeed with
my plan this time--" She shrugged. "There will be other worlds."
Wyatt said shrewdly, "They might not be as well able to fight back as
Earth, though. We don't quite have space flight yet, but we do have
nuclear weapons. Enough to give even your force a real jar. And that's
what you want, isn't it?"
Her face changed slightly. He thought she almost smiled, in a wry
unhumorous way.
"You're far too clever," she said. "Don't let your cleverness betray
you."
"I'll watch it," he said, not feeling clever at all, feeling sick and
agonized as the last thin rim of Earth dropped away out of sight and
all of a sudden he knew that he was in space.
For one wild moment he thought, This whole thing is a dream, it
happened too fast and it's all too crazy to be real, and pretty soon
I'll wake up. But he knew it was not a dream. He was here, awake and
substantial, and he was a captive, going with bound hands into an
unknown void.
And going fast.