"I'm in command here," growled Sergeant Madden. "Huks didn't booby trap.
Proud as hell, and touchy as all get-out, but not killers. Not crazy
killers, anyhow. You go get up yonder. Up where we started down. Then go
on away. Back to the squad ship. If I don't come along, anyhow you'll
know what's what when the _Aldeb_ comes."
Patrolman Willis expostulated. Sergeant Madden was firm. In the end,
Patrolman Willis went away. And Sergeant Madden sat at ease and rested
until he had time enough to get back to the squad ship. It was true that
the Huks didn't booby trap. They hadn't had the practice, anyhow, eighty
years ago. But this was a very important matter. Maybe they considered
it so important that they'd changed their policy concerning this.
Wheezing a little, Sergeant Madden pulled away large stones and small
ones. An opening appeared behind them. He grunted and continued his
labor. Nothing happened. The mouth of a mine shaft appeared, going
horizontally into the cliff.
Puffing from his exertions, Sergeant Madden went in. It was necessary if
he were to make a routine examination.
* * * * *
The _Aldeb_ came in a full day later. It descended, following the space
beacon the squad ship sent up from its resting place. The _Aldeb_ was
not an impressive sight, of course. It was a medium-sized police salvage
ship. It had a crew of fifteen, and it was powerfully engined, and it
contained a respectable amount of engineering experience and ability,
plus some spare parts and, much more important, the tools with which to
make others. It came down in a highly matter-of-fact fashion, and
Sergeant Madden and Patrolman Willis went over to it to explain the
situation.
"The _Cerberus_ came in on rockets," rumbled the sergeant, in the
salvage ship's skipper's cabin. "She landed. We found signs that some of
her people came out an' strolled around lookin' for souvenirs and such.
I make a guess that there was a minin' man among them, but it's only a
guess. Anyhow somebody went over to where there's some parti-colored
cliffs, where the sea comes away inland. And when they got to that
place ... why ... there was a ship there. Then."
He paused, frowning.
"It would've been standing on an artificial shoal place, about thirty
yards from a shaft that was the mouth of a mine. Uranium. And there's
been a lot of uranium taken outta there! It was hauled right outta the
mine shaft across the beach to the ship that was waitin'. And there's
fresh work in that mine, but not a tool or a scrap of paper to tell who
was workin' it. It must've been cleaned up like that every time a ship
left after loadin' up. Humans wouldn't've done it. They wouldn't care.
Huks would. There's not supposed to be any of them left in these parts,
but I'm guessing the mine was dug by Huks, and the _Cerberus_ was taken
away by them because the humans on the _Cerberus_ found out there was
Huks around."
Patrolman Willis said: "The sergeant took a chance on the mine being
booby-trapped and went in, after sending me out of range."
The sergeant scowled at him and went on.
"How it happened don't matter. Maybe somebody spotted the ship from the
_Cerberus_ as it was comin' down. Maybe anything. But whoever run the
mine found out somebody knew they were there, so they rushed the
_Cerberus_--there prob'ly wasn't even a stun-pistol on board to fight
with--and they put new rockets on her."
* * * * *
The skipper of the salvage ship _Aldeb_ nodded wisely.
"A ship comin' to load up minerals where there wasn't any spaceport," he
observed, "would have a set of rockets to land on, empty, and a double
set to take off on, loaded. Yeah."
"They must've figured," said Sergeant Madden, "that we just couldn't
make any sense out of what we found. And if we hadn't turned up that
mine, maybe never would. But anyhow they sent the _Cerberus_ off and
covered everything up and went off to stay, themselves, until we gave up
and went home."
"I wonder," said the skipper of the _Aldeb_, "where they took the
_Cerberus_? That's my job!"
"Not far," grunted Sergeant Madden. "They had to be taking the
_Cerberus_ somewhere. If they just wanted to wipe it out, after they
rushed it, they coulda just set off its fuel like it'd happened in a bad
landing. And that landing was bad! If there'd been a fuel-explosion
crater at the end of that burnt line on the ground, nobody'd ever've
looked further. But there wasn't. So there's a place they're takin' the
_Cerberus_ to. But it's got a brokedown drive. It can only hobble along.
They can't try to get but so far! What's the nearest sol-type star?"
The _Aldeb_'s skipper pushed a button and the Precinct Atlas came out of
its slot. The skipper punched keys and the atlas clicked and whirred.
Then its screen lighted. It showed a report on a solar system that had
been fully surveyed.
"Uh-uh," grunted the sergeant. "A survey woulda showed up if a planet
was Huk-occupied. What's next nearest?"
* * * * *
Again the atlas whirred and clicked. A single line of type appeared. It
said, "_Sirene, 1432. Unsurveyed._" The galactic co-ordinates followed.
That was all.
"This looks likely!" said the sergeant. "Unsurveyed, and off the ship
lanes. It ain't between any place and any other. It could go a thousand
years and never be landed on. It's got planets."
It was highly logical. According to Krishnamurti's Law, any sol-type sun
was bound to have planets of such-and-such relative sizes in orbits of
such-and-such relative distances.
"Willis and me," said the sergeant, "we'll go over and see if there's
Huks there and if they've got the _Cerberus_. You better get this stuff
on a message-torp ready to send off if you have to. Are you going to
come over to this--Sirene 1432?"
The skipper of the _Aldeb_ shrugged.
"Might as well. Why go home and have to come back again? There could be
a lot of Huks there."
"Yeah," admitted Sergeant Madden. "I'd guess a whole planet full of 'em
that laid low when the rest were scrapping with the Force. The others
lost and went clean across the galaxy. These characters stayed close.
I'm guessing. But they hid their mine, here. They could've been stewing
in their own juice these past eighty years, getting set to put up a hell
of a scrap when somebody found 'em. We'll be the ones to do it."
He stood up and shook himself.
"It's not far," he repeated. "Our boat's just fast enough we ought to
get there a couple of days after the _Cerberus_ sets down. You'd ought
to be five-six hours behind us." He considered. "Meet you north pole
farthest planet out this side of the sun. Right?"
"I'll look for you there," said the skipper of the _Aldeb_.
Sergeant Madden and Patrolman Willis went out of the salvage ship and
trudged to the squad ship. They climbed in.
"You got the co-ordinates?" asked the sergeant.
"I copied them off the atlas," said Willis.
Sergeant Madden settled himself comfortably.
"We'll go over," he grumbled, "and see what makes these Huks tick. They
raised a lot of hell, eighty years ago. It took all the off-duty men
from six precincts to handle the last riot. The Huks had got together
and built themselves a fightin' fleet then, though. It's not likely
there's more than one planetful of them where we're going. I thought
they'd all been moved out."
He shook his head vexedly.
"No need for 'em to have to go, except they wouldn't play along with
humans. Acted like delinks, they did. Only proud. Y'don't get mad
fighting 'em. So I heard, anyway. If they only had sense you could get
along with them."
He dogged the door shut. Patrolman Willis pushed a button. The squad
ship fell toward the sky.
Very matter-of-factly.
* * * * *
On the way over, in overdrive, Sergeant Madden again dozed a great deal
of the time. Sergeants do not fraternize extensively with mere
patrolmen, even on assignments. Especially not very senior sergeants
only two years from retirement. Patrolman Willis met with the sergeant's
approval, to be sure. Timmy was undoubtedly more competent as a cop, but
Timmy would have been in a highly emotional state with his girl on the
_Cerberus_ and that ship in the hands of the Huks.
Between naps, the sergeant somnolently went over what he knew about the
alien race. He'd heard that their thumbs were on the outside of their
hands. Intelligent nonhumans would have to have hands, and with some
equivalent of opposable thumbs, if their intelligence was to be of any
use to them. They pretty well had to be bipeds, too, and if they weren't
warm-blooded they couldn't have the oxygen-supply that highgrade brain
cells require.
There were even certain necessary psychological facts. They had to be
capable of learning and of passing on what they'd learned, or they'd
never have gotten past an instinctual social system. To pass on acquired
knowledge, they had to have family units in which teaching was done to
the young--at least at the beginning. Schools might have been invented
later. Most of all, their minds had to work logically to cope with a
logically constructed universe. In fact, they had to be very much like
humans, in almost all significant respects, in order to build up a
civilization and develop sciences and splendidly to invade space just a
few centuries before humans found them.
_But_, said Sergeant Madden to himself, _I bet they've still got armies
and navies!_
Patrolman Willis looked at him inquiringly, but the sergeant scowled at
his own thoughts. Yet the idea was very likely. When Huks first
encountered humans, they bristled with suspicion. They were definitely
on the defensive when they learned that humans had been in space
longer--much longer--than they had, and already occupied planets in
almost fifteen per cent of the galaxy.
Sergeant Madden found his mind obscurely switching to the matter of
delinks--those characters who act like adolescents, not only while they
are kids, but after. They were the permanent major annoyance of the
cops, because what they did didn't make sense. Learned books explained
why people went delink, of course. Mostly it was that they were madly
ambitious to be significant, to matter in some fashion, and didn't have
the ability to matter in the only ways they could understand. They
wanted to drive themselves to eminence, and frantically snatched at
chances to make themselves nuisances because they couldn't wait to be
important any other way.
Sergeant Madden blinked slowly to himself. When humans first took to
space a lot of them were after glamour, which is the seeming of
importance. His son Timmy was on the cops because he thought it
glamorous. Patrolman Willis was probably the same way. Glamour is the
offer of importance. An offer of importance is glamour.
The sergeant grunted to himself. A possible course of action came into
his mind. He and Patrolman Willis were on the way to the solar system
Sirene 1432, where Krishnamurti's Law said there ought to be something
very close to a terran-type planet in either the third or fourth orbit
out from the sun. That planet would be inhabited by Huks, who were very
much like humans. They knew of the defeat and forced emigration of their
fellow-Huks in other solar systems. They'd hidden from humans--and it
must have outraged their pride. So they must be ready to put up a
desperate and fanatical fight if they were ever discovered.
* * * * *
A squad ship with two cops in it, and a dumpy salvage ship with fifteen
more, did not make an impressive force to try to deal with a planetary
population which bitterly hated humans. But the cops did not plan
conquest. They were neither a fighting rescue expedition nor a punitive
one. They were simply cops on assignment to get the semi-freighter
_Cerberus_ back in shape to travel on her lawful occasions among the
stars, and to see that she and her passengers and crew got to the
destination for which they'd started. The cop's purpose was essentially
routine. And the Huks couldn't possibly imagine it.
Sergeant Madden settled some things in his mind and dozed off again.
When the squad ship came out of overdrive and he was awakened by the
unpleasantness of breakout, he yawned. He looked on without comment as
Patrolman Willis matter-of-factly performed the tricky task of
determining the ecliptic while a solar system's sun was little more than
a first-magnitude star. It was wholly improbable that anything like Huk
patrol ships would be out so far. It was even more improbable that any
kind of detection devices would be in operation. Any approaching ship
could travel several times as fast as any signal.
Patrolman Willis searched painstakingly. He found a planet which was a
mere frozen lump of matter in vastness. It was white from a layer of
frozen gases piled upon its more solid core. He made observations.
"I can find it again, sir, to meet the _Aldeb_. Orders, sir?"
"Orders?" demanded Sergeant Madden. "What? Oh. Head in toward the sun.
The Huks'll be on Planet Three or Four, most likely. And that's where
they'll have the _Cerberus_."
The squad ship continued sunward while Patrolman Willis continued his
observations. A star-picture along the ecliptic. An hour's run on
interplanetary drive--no overdrive field in use. Another picture. The
two prints had only to be compared with a blinker for planets to stick
out like sore thumbs, as contrasted with stars that showed no parallax.
Sirene I--the innermost planet--was plainly close to a transit. II was
away on the far side of its orbit. III was also on the far side. IV was
in quadrature. There was the usual gap where V should have been. VI--it
didn't matter. They'd passed VIII a little while since, a ball of stone
with a frigid gas-ice covering.
Patrolman Willis worked painstakingly with amplifiers on what oddments
could be picked up in space.
"It's Four, sir," he reported unnecessarily, because the sergeant had
watched as he worked. "They've got detectors out. I could just barely
pick up the pulses. But by the time they've been reflected back they'll
be away below thermal noise-volume. I don't think even multiples could
pick 'em out. I'm saying, sir, that I don't think they can detect us at
this distance."
Sergeant Madden grunted.
"D'you think we came this far not to be noticed?" he asked. But he was
not peevish. Rather, he seemed more thoroughly awake than he'd been
since the squad ship left the Precinct substation back on Varenga IV. He
rubbed his hands a little and stood up. "Hold it a minute, Willis."
He went back to the auxiliary-equipment locker. He returned to his seat
beside Patrolman Willis. He opened the breech of the ejector-tube beside
his chair.
"You've had street-fighting training," he said almost affably, "at the
Police Academy. And siege-of-criminals courses too, eh?" He did not wait
for an answer. "It's historic," he observed, "that since time began
cops've been stickin' out hats for crooks to shoot at, and that
crooks've been shooting, thinking there were heads in 'em."
He put a small object in the ejector tube, poked it to proper seating,
and settled himself comfortably, again.
"Can you make it to about a quarter-million miles of Four," he asked
cheerfully, "in one hop?"
Patrolman Willis set up the hop-timer. Sergeant Madden was pleased that
he aimed the squad ship not exactly at the minute disk which was Planet
IV of this system. It was prudence against the possibility of an error
in the reading of distance.
"Ever use a marker, Willis?"