The Golden Age Of Science Fiction Vol Iii Part 34

Patrolman Willis blinked again. Then he saw. The Cerberus carried one set of emergency-landing rockets, for use in a descent on a refuge planet if the need arose. The need had arisen and the Cerberus had used them. Then, from somewhere, another set of rockets had been produced for it to use in leaving. Those other rockets must have come on another ship. But it was a trifle more complicated than that. The Cerberus had carried one set of rockets and used them. One. It had been supplied with another set from somewhere. Two. They must have been brought by a ship which also used a set of rockets to land by. That made three. Then the other ship must have had a fourth set for its own take-off, or it would be grounded forever on Procyron III.

Patrolman Willis frowned.

"We looked pretty carefully from aloft," he said uncomfortably. "If there'd been another burned-off landing place, we'd have seen it."

"I know," rumbled Sergeant Madden. "And we didn't. But there must've been another ship aground when the Cerberus came in. Where was it? It prob'ly knew the Cerberus was landing to wait for help. How? If somebody was coming to help the Cerberus it would be bound to spot the other ship, and it didn't want to be spotted. Why? Anyhow, it must've taken the Cerberus and sent it off, and then taken off itself, leaving nothing sensible for us to think. 'Sounds like delinks." Then he growled. "Only it's not. There'd have to be too many men. Delinks don't work together more'n two or three. Too jealous of showin' off. But where was that other ship, and what was it doin' here?"

Patrolman Willis hesitated, and then said: "There used to be pirates, sergeant."

"Uh-huh," said the sergeant. "You had it right the first time, most likely. Not delinks. Not pirates. You said Huks." He looked around, estimatingly. "The rockets had to be brought here from somewhere else where they'd been landed. I'm betting the tracks were covered pretty careful. But rockets are heavy. Manhandlin' them, whoever was doin' it would take the easiest way. Hm-m-m. There's water close by over yonder. Sort of a sound in there--too narrow to be a bay. Let's have a look. And the slopes are easiest that way, too."

He led off to the eastward. He thought of Timmy's girl. He'd never seen her, but Timmy was going to marry her. She was on the Cerberus. It was the job of the cops to take care of whatever dilemma that ship might be in. As of here and now, it was Sergeant Madden's job. But besides that, he thought of the way Timmy would feel if anything happened to the girl he meant to marry. As Timmy's father, the sergeant had to do something. He wanted to do it fast. But it had to be done the right way.

The route he chose was rocky, but it was nearly the only practicable route away from the burned-dead landing place. He climbed toward what on this planet was the east. There were pinnacles and small precipices. There were small, fleshy-leaved bushes growing out of such tiny collections of soil as had formed in cracks and crevices in the rock.

Sergeant Madden noted that one such bush was wilted. He stopped. He bent over and carefully felt of the stones about it. A small rock came out. The bush had been out of the ground before. It had carefully been replaced. By someone.

"The rockets came this way," said the sergeant, with finality. "Hauled over this pa.s.s to the Cerberus. Somebody must've knocked this bush loose while workin' at getting 'em along. So he replanted it. Only not good enough. It wilted."

"Who did it?" demanded Patrolman Willis.

"Who we want to know about," growled Sergeant Madden. "Maybe Huks. Come on!"

He scrambled ahead. He wheezed as he climbed and descended. After half a mile, Patrolman Willis said abruptly: "You figure they all left, before anybody tried to find 'em?"

The sergeant grunted affirmatively. A quarter mile still farther, the rocky ground fell away. There was the gleam of water below them. Rocky cliffs enclosed an arm of the sea that came deep into the land, here. In the cliffs rock-strata tilted insanely. There were red and yellow and black layers--mostly yellow and black. They showed in startlingly clear contrast.

"Right!" said Sergeant Madden in morose satisfaction. "I thought there might've been a boat. But this's it!"

He went down a steep descent to the very edge of the sound--it was even more like a fjord--where the waters of the ocean came in among the island's hills. On the far side, a little cascade leaped and bubbled down to join the sea.

"You go that way," commanded Sergeant Madden, "and I'll go this. We've got two things to look for--a shallow place in the water coming right up to sh.o.r.e. And look for signs of traffic from the cliffs to the water. By the color of those rocks, we'd ought to find both."

He lumbered away along the water's edge. There were no creatures which sang or chirped. The only sounds were wind and the lapping of waves against the sh.o.r.e. It was very, very lonely.

Half a mile from the point of his first descent, the sergeant found a shoal. It was a flat s.p.a.ce of shallow water--discoverable by the color of the bottom. The water was not over four feet deep. It was a remarkably level shoal place.

He whistled on his fingers. When Patrolman Willis reached him, he pointed to the cliffs directly across the beach from the shallow water. Lurid yellow tints stained the cliff walls. Odd ma.s.ses of fallen stone dotted the cliff foot. At one place they were piled high. That pile looked quite natural--except that it was at the very center of the sh.o.r.e line next the shoal.

"This rock's yellow," said Sergeant Madden, rumbling a little. "It's mineral. If we had a Geiger, it'd be raising h.e.l.l, here. There's a mine in there. Uranium. If a ship came down on rockets, an' landed in that shoal place yonder ... why ... it wouldn't leave a burned spot comin' down or takin' off, either. Y'see?"

Patrolman Willis said: "Look here, sergeant--"

"I'm in command here," growled Sergeant Madden. "Huks didn't b.o.o.by trap. Proud as h.e.l.l, 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 b.o.o.by 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 s.p.a.ce 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 sc.r.a.p 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 b.o.o.by-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 s.p.a.ceport," 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, n.o.body'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 b.u.t.ton 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 sc.r.a.pping 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 h.e.l.l of a sc.r.a.p 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 h.e.l.l, 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 b.u.t.ton. 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 a.s.signments. 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 pa.s.sing on what they'd learned, or they'd never have gotten past an instinctual social system. To pa.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.signment 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 pa.s.sengers 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...o...b..t. 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ce.

"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?"

Patrolman Willis said: "No, sir."

Before he'd finished saying it the squad ship had hopped into overdrive and out again.

Sergeant Madden approved of the job. His son Timmy couldn't have done better. Here was Planet IV before them, a little off to one side, as was proper. They had run no risk of hitting in overdrive.

The distance was just about a quarter-million miles, if Krishnamurti's Law predicting the size and distance of planets in a sol-type system was reliable. The world was green and had icecaps. There should always be, in a system of this kind, at least one oxygen-planet with a nearly-terran-normal range of temperature. That usually meant green plants and an ocean or two. There wasn't quite as much sea as usual, on this planet, and therefore there were some extensive yellow areas that must be desert. But it was a good, habitable world. Anybody whose home it was would defend it fiercely.

"Hm-m-m," said Sergeant Madden. He took the ejector-tube lanyard in his hand. He computed mentally. About a quarter-million miles, say. A second and a half to alarm, down below. Five seconds more to verification. Another five to believe it. Not less than twenty altogether to report and get authority to fire. The Huks were a fighting race and presumably organized, so they'd have a chain of command and decisions would be made at the top. Army stuff, or navy. Not like the cops, where everybody knew both the immediate and final purposes of any operation in progress, and could act without waiting for orders.

It should be not less than thirty seconds before a firing key made contact down below. As a matter of history, years ago the Huks had used eighty-gravity rockets with tracking-heads and bust-bombs on them. These Huks would hardly be behind the others in equipment. And back then, too, Huks kept their rocket missiles out in orbit where they could flare into eighty-gee acceleration without wasting time getting out to where an enemy was. In their struggle against the cops two generations ago the Huks had had to learn that fighting wasn't all drama and heroics. The cops had taken the glamour out when they won. So the Huks wouldn't waste time making fine gestures now. The squad ship had appeared off their planet. It had not transmitted a code identification-signal the instant it came out of overdrive. The Huks were hiding from the cops, so they'd shoot.

"Hop on past," commanded Sergeant Madden, "the instant I jerk the ejector lanyard. Don't fool around. Over the pole will do."

Patrolman Willis set the hop-timer. Twenty seconds. Twenty-two. Three. Four.

"Hop!" said Sergeant Madden. As he spoke, he jerked the lanyard.