_The four survivors were sitting ducks
surrounded by barbaric savages. And
they were doubly handicapped, because
they knew that one of them was a traitor!_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The robot supply ship came every Thursday at seven minutes after noon.
It was an unfortunate hour for the personnel of the Nevada station,
who happened to be in the commissary at lunch. Out of fourteen hundred
assigned to the post, only four escaped--two guards on noon duty in the
watch tower; the Commander's wife, who had skipped lunch and stayed in
her cottage; and Captain Tchassen.
The Captain was on a hill south of the station making a Tri-D shot
of the range of mountains west of the camp. He took his amateur
photography seriously and, like any tourist, he was fascinated by the
rugged scenery; there was nothing comparable to this on any world in
the civilized galaxy. To get the back lighting that he wanted, Tchassen
would cheerfully have given up any number of meals. As a matter of
fact, he wasn't aware that it was noon until he heard the jet blast of
the supply ship as it came in on the transit beam.
Tchassen saw the ship spin out of control as the beam went haywire.
The robot plunged into the heart of the station and the earth shook
in the catastrophic explosion of the nuclear reactor. The commissary,
the communication center, the supply sheds and the row of patrol ships
vanished in the rising, mushroom cloud. Concussion threw Tchassen
violently to the ground. His camera was smashed against a boulder.
The Captain picked himself up unsteadily. He took a capsule from his
belt pouch and swallowed it--a specific against shock and radiation
sickness. In a remarkably short time, Tchassen's mind cleared. He saw
the prisoners pouring through the gap torn in the compound fence and
running for the hills. But that did not alarm him particularly. They
were unarmed and for the moment they represented no real danger.
Tchassen began to run toward the ruined administrative center. He
had to find out if there were any other survivors and he had to make
emergency contact with the occupation base on the coast. He ran with
considerable difficulty. After less than a hundred yards, he was
gasping for breath. He slowed to a walk. He could feel the hammering of
his heart; his throat was dry and ice cold.
To the escaped prisoners, watching from beyond the camp, the
Captain's weakness was unbelievable--for Tchassen, in his twenties,
had a magnificent build. Typical of the occupation army, he wore
the regulation military uniform, knee-high boots and tight-fitting,
silver colored trousers. Above the waist he was naked, except for
the neck-chain which carried the emblem of his rank. His body was
deeply tanned. His hair was a bristling, yellow crown. Yet, despite
his appearance, his sudden exhaustion was very real; Captain Tchassen
had been on Earth only five days and he was still not adjusted to the
atmospheric differences.
As he passed the row of officers' cottages, he fell against a wall,
panting for breath. The flat-roofed buildings were nearly a mile from
the crater of the explosion, yet even here windows had been broken by
concussion. A cold, arid wind whipped past the dwellings; somewhere a
door, torn loose from its frame, was banging back and forth.
Then Tchassen heard a muffled cry. In one of the officer's cottages
he found Tynia. She had been thrown from her bed and the bed was
overturned above her. It was a fortunate accident; the mattress had
protected her from the flying glass.
Tchassen helped her to her feet. She clung to him, trembling. He was
very conscious of her sensuous beauty, as he had been since he first
came to the Nevada station. Tynia was the wife of the commanding
officer: Tchassen kept reminding himself of that, as if it could
somehow build a barrier against her attractiveness. She was strikingly
beautiful--and thirty years younger than her husband. It was common
gossip that she had been flirting with most of the junior officers
assigned to the station. Tchassen was, in fact, a security investigator
sent to probe the potential scandal and recommend a means for heading
it off.
He gave Tynia a shock pill from his pouch. Her hysteria subsided. She
became suddenly modest about the semi-transparent bedgown she was
wearing, and she zipped into a tight coverall, made from the same
silver-hued material as the Captain's trousers. They went outside. She
stood a foot shorter than Tchassen. Her dark hair framed her face in
graceful waves; make-up emphasized the size of her eyes and the lush,
scarlet bow of her lips.
Tynia glanced toward the crater, shielding her face from the noon sun.
"What happened, Captain?"
"The flight beam failed; the supply ship exploded."
"And killed them all." She said it flatly, without feeling--but
Tchassen doubted that she would have mourned the loss of her husband in
any case.
"I'll have to get word through to the coast. We'll need a rescue helio
and--"
"I know how to use the emergency transmitter," Tynia volunteered.
"There may be other survivors, Captain Tchassen; they'll need your
help."
"I don't want to leave you alone, Tynia." It was the first time he
spoke her given name, though the informality was commonplace among the
junior officers on the post. "The prisoners are out of the compound. We
may have trouble."
"Not yet, Captain; they're still unarmed. I'll be all right." She
nodded toward the crater. "We have to make sure there's no one else
alive down there."
* * * * *
He left her reluctantly. She went toward the emergency communications
room, buried in a metal-walled pillbox which had been intentionally
located far from the center of the station. Tchassen walked across the
scarred earth in the direction of the crater. None of the important
buildings had survived. Concussion had torn up the fence around the
prison compound, but the cell block, half a mile from the explosion
and built of concrete and steel, was still standing. The watch tower,
beyond the prison building, stood askew on bent metal pillars, but it
was otherwise undamaged.
The Captain knew that at least two guards were on watch duty at all
hours; they might still be alive. He crossed the crater and pulled
himself up the battered stairs to the top of the tower. The door was
jammed. Using a broken piece of railing as a lever, he pried it open.
He found the two guards unconscious, slumped across their observation
console.
He gave them shock capsules, but the men regained consciousness slowly.
While he waited, Tchassen read their identity disks. The Corporal,
Gorin Drein, was a three-year draftee, serving a six month tour of
duty on Earth. He was a fair-haired, blue-eyed boy, probably no more
than twenty years old. Sergeant Briggan was an army career man, in
his fifties and only a few years away from retirement. Yet the only
physical indication of his age was the touch of gray in his bristling
mane of dark hair.
When their erratic breathing steadied and they opened their eyes, the
Captain explained what had happened. Both men were still groggy; the
shock pills inhibited their normal emotional reactions. Neither Briggan
nor Drein had much to say until Tchassen helped them down from the
tower and they stood looking at the hole blasted in the earth.
"The supply rocket," Sergeant Briggan said slowly, "couldn't have done
this; the beam landings are foolproof. The prisoners must have pulled
it off, though I don't see--"
"How?" Tchassen broke in. "The compound fence didn't go down until
after the blast; there was no way any of them could get out."
"Robot ships just don't get off the beam," Corporal Drein declared
stubbornly.
Briggan nodded toward the empty cell block. "It worked out nicely--for
the prisoners. A single explosion wipes out most of us; but the
prisoners are far enough away from the blast center to escape."
"Surely there isn't any danger of revolution," Tchassen asked,
unconsciously mocking the optimism of the security bulletins. "Not any
longer."
Briggan grinned. "You've only been here five days, sir; you don't know
how thoroughly our indoctrination has failed. The Earth people hate us
more than ever."
"Even so, how could one of the prisoners have brought the robot down?"
"By tampering with the beam."
"But that means they had a subversive--that means one of us must be--"
"An Earthman, yes. We encourage them to apply for citizenship. If we
had an Earthman on the post masquerading as an officer, how would we
know it--unless he told us? They're no different from our own people,
Captain."
On the other side of the crater Tynia staggered out of the
communications pillbox. Tchassen saw her waving frantically and he knew
something was wrong--very wrong. He began to run toward her. Briggan
and Drein followed close behind him. Almost immediately the Captain
staggered and gasped for breath; he motioned for the Sergeant and the
Corporal to go on without him.
Briggan waited long enough to say, "So far we've located four
survivors, sir--only four. And one of the four is very probably an
Earthman. The transit beams don't fail of their own accord. It's not a
very nice thing to think about, is it, sir?"
* * * * *
The two men left him and Tchassen walked slowly, alone across the
barren land. The wind whispered against his naked chest; it felt
suddenly cold and forbidding. The ragged peaks piled on the western
horizon were no longer simply photogenic curiosities of an alien world,
but symbols of undefined terror.
Why had the supply robot crashed? Why had the prisoners been able to
get away without a casualty? Had it been planned by an officer of
the station? If so, where was he now--with the prisoners, dead in
the commissary, or among the four survivors? The tide of questions
hammered at Tchassen's mind, but he came up with no workable answers.
His real trouble stemmed from the fact that he knew so little about
the Earth people. Their reasoning was beyond rational analysis. They
were physically identical to normal human beings, and it was almost
impossible not to assume that their thinking would be normally human,
too.
When Tchassen reached the communications pillbox, the Sergeant, the
Corporal, and Tynia were inside. In the gloomy half-light he saw
the others silently trying to patch together the broken wires of
the transmitter. It was hopeless; Tchassen saw that at once. Only a
master technician could have made sense out of that jumbled maze. The
other three knew that, too. They stopped when they saw Tchassen and
looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to tell them what to do.
With something of a shock, he realized that he now ranked as station
commander.
"I don't believe the explosion wrecked the transmitter," Tchassen
decided uncertainly.
"It was torn up like this when I first came in," Tynia told him.
"So we couldn't get in touch with the occupation base. Obviously one
of the prisoners did it. They must have had--" The Captain licked his
lips. "They must have had outside help."
"What do we do now?" Tynia's voice was shrill with rising hysteria. "We
can't radio for a rescue ship. How do we get away?"
"It's up to us to find something else."
She moved close to Sergeant Briggan, reaching for his hand. "The Earth
people are outside somewhere, waiting to kill us. We can't escape,
Captain! And you start talking nonsense--"
Very deliberately Tchassen slapped the back of his hand against her
cheek. The pillbox was abruptly very still. She stared at him, her eyes
wide. Slowly she raised her hand and touched the reddening mark on her
face. She shrank against Briggan and the Sergeant put his arm around
her shoulders.
"You didn't have to do that, Captain," he bristled.
"Don't quarrel," Tynia whispered. "Not on my account."
Tchassen's muscles tensed. This was the way Tynia had created
tension on the post; he had seen it happen to her husband. Yet
could he honestly blame her? It wasn't her fault; just the irony of
circumstance. And Tchassen knew that his anger now was primarily envy,
because she had turned to the Sergeant for protection and not to him.
He made himself relax. "Hysteria," he said, "is a luxury none of us can
afford."
"You're right," Tynia answered. "Absolutely right. I was very foolish."