[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astounding Science Fiction, March 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The nearer moon went by overhead. It was jagged and irregular in shape,
and was probably a captured asteroid. Huyghens had seen it often
enough, so he did not go out of his quarters to watch it hurtle across
the sky with seemingly the speed of an atmosphere-flier, occulting the
stars as it went. Instead, he sweated over paper work, which should
have been odd because he was technically a felon and all his labors on
Loren Two felonious. It was odd, too, for a man to do paper work in a
room with steel shutters and a huge bald eagle--untethered--dozing on
a three-inch perch set in the wall. But paper work was not Huyghens'
real task. His only assistant had tangled with a night-walker and the
furtive Kodius Company ships had taken him away to where Kodius Company
ships came from. Huyghens had to do two men's work in loneliness. To
his knowledge, he was the only man in this solar system.
Below him, there were snufflings. Sitka Pete got up heavily and
padded to his water pan. He lapped the refrigerated water and sneezed
violently. Sourdough Charley waked and complained in a rumbling growl.
There were divers other rumblings and mutterings below. Huyghens
called reassuringly, "Easy there!" and went on with his work. He
finished a climate report, and fed figures to a computer, and while
it hummed over them he entered the inventory totals in the station
log, showing what supplies remained. Then he began to write up the log
proper.
"_Sitka Pete_," he wrote, "_has apparently solved the problem of
killing individual sphexes. He has learned that it doesn't do to hug
them and that his claws can't penetrate their hide--not the top hide,
anyhow. Today Semper notified us that a pack of sphexes had found the
scent-trail to the station. Sitka hid down-wind until they arrived.
Then he charged from the rear and brought his paws together on both
sides of a sphex's head in a terrific pair of slaps. It must have been
like two twelve-inch shells arriving from opposite directions at the
same time. It must have scrambled the sphex's brains as if they were
eggs. It dropped dead. He killed two more with such mighty pairs of
wallops. Sourdough Charley watched, grunting, and when the sphexes
turned on Sitka, he charged in his turn. I, of course, couldn't shoot
too close to him, so he might have fared badly but that Faro Nell came
pouring out of the bear quarters to help. The diversion enabled Sitka
Pete to resume the use of his new technic, towering on his hind legs
and swinging his paws in the new and grisly fashion. The fight ended
promptly. Semper flew and screamed above the scrap, but as usual did
not join in. Note: Nugget, the cub, tried to mix in but his mother
cuffed him out of the way. Sourdough and Sitka ignored him as usual.
Kodius Champion's genes are sound!_"
The noises of the night went on outside. There were notes like organ
tones--song lizards. There were the tittering giggling cries of
night-walkers--not to be tittered back at. There were sounds like
tack hammers, and doors closing, and from every direction came noises
like hiccups in various keys. These were made by the improbable small
creatures which on Loren Two took the place of insects.
Huyghens wrote out:
"_Sitka seemed ruffled when the fight was over. He painstakingly used
his trick on every dead or wounded sphex, except those he'd killed
with it, lifting up their heads for his pile-driverlike blows from two
directions at once, as if to show Sourdough how it was done. There
was much grunting as they hauled the carcasses to the incinerator. It
almost seemed_--"
* * * * *
The arrival bell clanged, and Huyghens jerked up his head to stare at
it. Semper, the eagle, opened icy eyes. He blinked.
Noises. There was a long, deep, contented snore from below. Something
shrieked, out in the jungle. Hiccups. Clatterings, and organ notes--
The bell clanged again. It was a notice that a ship aloft somewhere had
picked up the beacon beam--which only Kodius Company ships should know
about--and was communicating for a landing. But there shouldn't be any
ships in this solar system just now! This was the only habitable planet
of the sun, and it had been officially declared uninhabitable by reason
of inimical animal life. Which meant sphexes. Therefore no colony was
permitted, and the Kodius Company broke the law. And there were few
graver crimes than unauthorized occupation of a new planet.
The bell clanged a third time. Huyghens swore. His hand went out to
cut off the beacon--but that would be useless. Radar would have fixed
it and tied it in with physical features like the nearby sea and the
Sere Plateau. The ship could find the place, anyhow, and descend by
day-light.
"The devil!" said Huyghens. But he waited yet again for the bell to
ring. A Kodius Company ship would double-ring to reassure him. But
there shouldn't be a Kodius Company ship for months.
The bell clanged singly. The space phone dial flickered and a voice
came out of it, tinny from stratospheric distortion:
"_Calling ground! Calling ground! Crete Line ship_ Odysseus _calling
ground on Loren Two. Landing one passenger by boat. Put on your field
lights._"
Huyghens' mouth dropped open. A Kodius Company ship would be welcome.
A Colonial Survey ship would be extremely unwelcome, because it
would destroy the colony and Sitka and Sourdough and Faro Nell and
Nugget--and Semper--and carry Huyghens off to be tried for unauthorized
colonization and all that it implied.
But a commercial ship, landing one passenger by boat--There were simply
no circumstances under which that would happen. Not to an unknown,
illegal colony. Not to a furtive station!
Huyghens flicked on the landing-field lights. He saw the glare in the
field outside. Then he stood up and prepared to take the measures
required by discovery. He packed the paper work he'd been doing into
the disposal safe. He gathered up all personal documents and tossed
them in. Every record, every bit of evidence that the Kodius Company
maintained this station went into the safe. He slammed the door. He
touched his finger to the disposal button, which would destroy the
contents and melt down even the ashes past their possible use for
evidence in court.
Then he hesitated. If it were a Survey ship, the button had to
be pressed and he must resign himself to a long term in prison.
But a Crete Line ship--if the space phone told the truth--was not
threatening. It was simply unbelievable.
He shook his head. He got into travel garb and armed himself. He went
down into the bear quarters, turning on lights as he went. There
were startled snufflings and Sitka Pete reared himself very absurdly
to a sitting position to blink at him. Sourdough Charley lay on his
back with his legs in the air. He'd found it cooler, sleeping that
way. He rolled over with a thump. He made snorting sounds which
somehow sounded cordial. Faro Nell padded to the door of her separate
apartment--assigned her so that Nugget would not be under-foot to
irritate the big males.
Huyghens, as the human population of Loren Two, faced the work force,
fighting force, and--with Nugget--four-fifths of the terrestrial
nonhuman population of the planet. They were mutated Kodiak bears,
descendants of that Kodius Champion for whom the Kodius Company was
named. Sitka Pete was a good twenty-two hundred pounds of lumbering,
intelligent carnivore. Sourdough Charley would weigh within a hundred
pounds of that figure. Faro Nell was eighteen hundred pounds of female
charm--and ferocity. Then Nugget poked his muzzle around his mother's
furry rump to see what was toward, and he was six hundred pounds of
ursine infancy. The animals looked at Huyghens expectantly. If he'd had
Semper riding on his shoulder, they'd have known what was expected of
them.
"Let's go," said Huyghens. "It's dark outside, but somebody's coming.
And it may be bad!"
* * * * *
He unfastened the outer door of the bear quarters. Sitka Pete went
charging clumsily through it. A forth-right charge was the best
way to develop any situation--if one was an oversized male Kodiak
bear. Sourdough went lumbering after him. There was nothing hostile
immediately outside. Sitka stood up on his hind legs--he reared up a
solid twelve feet--and sniffed the air. Sourdough methodically lumbered
to one side and then the other, sniffing in his turn. Nell came out,
nine-tenths of a ton of daintiness, and rumbled admonitorily at
Nugget, who trailed her closely. Huyghens stood in the doorway, his
night-sighted gun ready. He felt uncomfortable at sending the bears
ahead into a Loren Two jungle at night. But they were qualified to
scent danger, and he was not.
The illumination of the jungle in a wide path toward the landing field
made for weirdness in the look of things. There were arching giant
ferns and columnar trees which grew above them, and the extraordinary
lanceolate underbrush of the jungle. The flood lamps, set level with
the ground, lighted everything from below. The foliage, then, was
brightly lit against the black night-sky--brightly lit enough to
dim-out the stars. There were astonishing contrasts of light and shadow
everywhere.
"On ahead!" commanded Huyghens, waving. "Hup!"
He swung the bear-quarters door shut. He moved toward the landing field
through the lane of lighted forest. The two giant male Kodiaks lumbered
ahead. Sitka Pete dropped to all fours and prowled. Sourdough Charley
followed closely, swinging from side to side. Huyghens came alertly
behind the two of them, and Faro Nell brought up the rear with Nugget
following her closely.
It was an excellent military formation for progress through dangerous
jungle. Sourdough and Sitka were advance-guard and point, respectively,
while Faro Nell guarded the rear. With Nugget to look after, she was
especially alert against attack from behind. Huyghens was, of course,
the striking force. His gun fired explosive bullets which would
discourage even sphexes, and his night-sight--a cone of light which
went on when he took up the trigger-slack--told exactly where they
would strike. It was not a sportsmanlike weapon, but the creatures
of Loren Two were not sportsmanlike antagonists. The night-walkers,
for example--But night-walkers feared light. They attacked only in a
species of hysteria if it were too bright.
Huyghens moved toward the glare at the landing field. His mental state
was savage. The Kodius Company station on Loren Two was completely
illegal. It happened to be necessary, from one point of view, but
it was still illegal. The tinny voice on the space phone was not
convincing, in ignoring that illegality. But if a ship landed, Huyghens
could get back to the station before men could follow, and he'd have
the disposal safe turned on in time to protect those who'd sent him
here.
But he heard the faraway and high harsh roar of a landing-boat
rocket--not a ship's bellowing tubes--as he made his way through the
unreal-seeming brush. The roar grew louder as he pushed on, the three
big Kodiaks padding here and there, sniffing thoughtfully, making a
perfect defensive-offensive formation for the particular conditions of
this planet.
He reached the edge of the landing field, and it was blindingly bright,
with the customary divergent beams slanting skyward so a ship could
check its instrument landing by sight. Landing fields like this had
been standard, once upon a time. Nowadays all developed planets had
landing grids--monstrous structures which drew upon ionospheres for
power and lifted and drew down star ships with remarkable gentleness
and unlimited force. This sort of landing field would be found where a
survey-team was at work, or where some strictly temporary investigation
of ecology or bacteriology was under way, or where a newly authorized
colony had not yet been able to build its landing grid. Of course it
was unthinkable that anybody would attempt a settlement in defiance of
the law!
Already, as Huyghens reached the edge of the scorched open space,
the night-creatures had rushed to the light like moths on Earth.
The air was misty with crazily gyrating, tiny flying things. They
were innumerable and of every possible form and size, from the white
midges of the night and multi-winged flying worms to those revoltingly
naked-looking larger creatures which might have passed for plucked
flying monkeys if they had not been carnivorous and worse. The flying
things soared and whirred and danced and spun insanely in the glare.
They made peculiarly plaintive humming noises. They almost formed a
lamp-lit ceiling over the cleared space. They did hide the stars.
Staring upward, Huyghens could just barely make out the blue-white
flame of the space-boat's rocket through the fog of wings and bodies.
* * * * *
The rocket-flame grew steadily in size. Once, apparently, it tilted to
adjust the boat's descending course. It went back to normal. A speck
of incandescence at first, it grew until it was like a great star, and
then a more-than-brilliant moon, and then it was a pitiless glaring
eye. Huyghens averted his gaze from it. Sitka Pete sat lumpily--more
than a ton of him--and blinked wisely at the dark jungle away from the
light. Sourdough ignored the deepening, increasing rocket roar. He
sniffed the air delicately. Faro Nell held Nugget firmly under one huge
paw and licked his head as if tidying him up to be seen by company.
Nugget wriggled.
The roar became that of ten thousand thunders. A warm breeze blew
outward from the landing field. The rocket boat hurled downward,
and its flame touched the mist of flying things, and they shriveled
and burned and were hot. Then there were churning clouds of dust
everywhere, and the center of the field blazed terribly,--and something
slid down a shaft of fire, and squeezed it flat, and sat on it,--and
the flame went out. The rocket boat sat there, resting on its tail
fins, pointing toward the stars from which it came.
There was a terrible silence after the tumult. Then, very faintly, the
noises of the night came again. There were sounds like those of organ
pipes, and very faint and apologetic noises like hiccups. All these
sounds increased, and suddenly Huyghens could hear quite normally. Then
a side-port opened with a quaint sort of clattering, and something
unfolded from where it had been inset into the hull of the space boat,
and there was a metal passageway across the flame-heated space on which
the boat stood.
A man came out of the port. He reached back in and shook hands very
formally. He climbed down the ladder rungs to the walkway. He marched
above the steaming baked area, carrying a traveling bag. He reached the
end of the walk and stepped gingerly to the ground. He moved hastily to
the edge of the clearing. He waved to the space boat. There were ports.
Perhaps someone returned the gesture. The walkway folded briskly back
up to the hull and vanished in it. A flame exploded into being under
the tail fins. There were fresh clouds of monstrous, choking dust and
a brightness like that of a sun. There was noise past the possibility
of endurance. Then the light rose swiftly through the dust cloud, and
sprang higher and climbed more swiftly still. When Huyghens' ears again
permitted him to hear anything, there was only a diminishing mutter in
the heavens and a small bright speck of light ascending to the sky and
swinging eastward as it rose to intercept the ship which had let it
descend.
The night noises of the jungle went on. Life on Loren Two did not need
to heed the doings of men. But there was a spot of incandescence in the
day-bright clearing, and a short, brisk man looked puzzledly about him
with a traveling bag in his hand.
Huyghens advanced toward him as the incandescence dimmed. Sourdough and
Sitka preceded him. Faro Nell trailed faithfully, keeping a maternal
eye on her offspring. The man in the clearing stared at the parade they
made. It would be upsetting, even after preparation, to land at night
on a strange planet, and to have the ship's boat and all links with the
rest of the cosmos depart, and then to find one's self approached--it
might seem stalked--by two colossal male Kodiak bears, with a third
bear and a cub behind them. A single human figure in such company might
seem irrelevant.
* * * * *
The new arrival gazed blankly. He moved, startledly. Then Huyghens
called:
"Hello, there! Don't worry about the bears! They're friends!"
Sitka reached the newcomer. He went warily down-wind from him and
sniffed. The smell was satisfactory. Man-smell. Sitka sat down with the
solid impact of more than a ton of bear-meat landing on packed dirt.
He regarded the man amiably. Sourdough said "_Whoosh!_" and went on to
sample the air beyond the clearing. Huyghens approached. The newcomer
wore the uniform of the Colonial Survey. That was bad. It bore the
insignia of a senior officer. Worse.
"Hah!" said the just-landed man. "Where are the robots? What in all the
nineteen hells are these creatures? Why did you shift your station? I'm
Roane, here to make a progress report on your colony."
Huyghens said:
"What colony?"
"Loren Two Robot Installation--" Then Roane said indignantly, "Don't
tell me that that idiot skipper dropped me at the wrong place! This is
Loren Two, isn't it? And this is the landing field. But where are your
robots? You should have the beginning of a grid up! What the devil's
happened here and what are these beasts?"
Huyghens grimaced.
"This," he said politely, "is an illegal, unlicensed settlement. I'm
a criminal. These beasts are my confederates. If you don't want to
associate with criminals you needn't, of course, but I doubt if you'll
live till morning unless you accept my hospitality while I think over
what to do about your landing. In reason, I ought to shoot you."
Faro Nell came to a halt behind Huyghens, which was her proper post in
all out-door movement. Nugget, however, saw a new human. Nugget was a
cub, and, therefore, friendly. He ambled forward ingratiatingly. He was
four feet high at the shoulders, on all fours. He wriggled bashfully as
he approached Roane. He sneezed, because he was embarrassed.
His mother overtook him swiftly and cuffed him to one side. He wailed.
The wail of a six-hundred-pound Kodiak bear-cub is a remarkable sound.
Roane gave ground a pace.
"I think," he said carefully, "that we'd better talk things over.
But if this is an illegal colony, of course you're under arrest and
anything you say will be used against you."
Huyghens grimaced again.
"Right," he said. "But now if you'll walk close to me, we'll head back
to the station. I'd have Sourdough carry your bag--he likes to carry
things--but he may need his teeth. We've half a mile to travel." He
turned to the animals. "Let's go!" he said commandingly. "Back to the
station! Hup!"
Grunting, Sitka Pete arose and took up his duties as advanced point
of a combat team. Sourdough trailed, swinging widely to one side and
another. Huyghens and Roane moved together. Faro Nell and Nugget
brought up the rear. Which, of course, was the only relatively safe way
for anybody to travel on Loren Two, in the jungle, a good half mile
from one's fortress-like residence.
But there was only one incident on the way back. It was a night-walker,
made hysterical by the lane of light. It poured through the underbrush,
uttering cries like maniacal laughter.
Sourdough brought it down, a good ten yards from Huyghens. When it was
all over, Nugget bristled up to the dead creature, uttering cub-growls.
He feigned to attack it.
His mother whacked him soundly.