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nothing- They may still be in the craft," he suggested.
"Okay," Brazil replied, "I'll set down a few hun-
dred meters from them. Hain, you stay back just out-
side this boat and cover me. The other two of you stay inside. If anything
happens to us, the mother ship will reclaim the boat."
There was a soft bump, and they were down on the surface of Dalgonia. Brazil
reached into the broad, black belt he wore on the outside of his pres-
sure suit and removed one of two pistols and handed it to Hain.
The pistols didn't look like much, but they could fire short pulses of energy
at rates from one per sec-
ond to five hundred per second, the latter not doing much for aim but able to
spread things enough to knock off a small regiment. There was a stun setting
that would paralyze a man for a half hour or more, but both men placed their
weapons on full.
There were seven ugly bodies far to the south.
Brazil eased out of the hatch in the eerie silence of a near vacuum, and,
keeping the two shuttlecraft al-
ways in view, moved to cover behind the lifeboat.
That was a relatively safe haven. Since the boat had
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41
been built to take a tremendous amount of stress and even friction, it would
be impervious to any weapons likely to be in the hands of their quarry.
Ham emerged shortly after, having more trouble climbing down with his bulk
despite the weak gravity.
He chose a position Just forward of the nose where he was mostly sheltered but
could still use the edge of the boat to steady his pistol.
Brazil, satisfied, moved cautiously forward.
He reached the nearest craft in less than two min-
utes. "No sign of life yet," he told them. "I'm going to climb up on top and
have a look inside." He mounted the rail-type ladder along the side of the
shuttle and walked over to the entry hatch.
"Still nothing," Brazil reported. "I'm going in."
It took only another three minutes to get inside and find nobody home. He then
repeated the se-
quence with the second craft and found it empty too, although this one showed
signs that somebody had spent many hours there.
"Come on up, anybody," he called. "There's no one here, or for many kilometers
around. See what you make of it."
Hain told Wu Julee to join him. Vardia climbed out last, and they all went
over to the captain, who was standing near the second shuttle and looking
anxiously at the ground. Brazil noted with some amusement that
Vardia clutched her nice, pretty sword.
"Look at the ground here," he said, pointing to the tracks of a person in a
pressure suit coming up to a point at which the dust around was greatly
disturbed for a large area.
"What do you make of it. Captain?" Hain asked.
"Well, it looks as if my theory's right, anyway.
See the first one was here, then saw the second one land, and he hid out on
the back of the shuttle. When the pursuer the guy who landed second I assume
was the murderer found nobody home, he walked around to here" Brazil gestured
at the mottled dust thrown about "and was jumped by the first person from on
top. They fought here, then one took off across the plain, the other in
pursuit. See how we get only the toe tracks coming out of the fight scene?"
42
Vardia was already following the tracks out onto the plain. Suddenly she
stopped short and stared, in-
credulous, at the ground. "Captain! Everyone! Come here!" she called urgently.
They rushed up to her.
She was pointing at the ground immediately ahead of her.
The fine dust was thinner here, and the rock changed color from a dull orange
to more of a gray, but at first they didn't see what she meant. Brazil went
over and stooped down. Then it sank in on him.
At the place where one man had stepped, just where the two strains of rock
met, there was half a footprint. Not the running type it was angled, so that a
little less than half of a grown man's footprint, pressure suit pattern and
all, was visible in the or-
ange. Where it met the gray, there was unbroken dust.
"How is it possible. Captain?" Vardia asked, awed for the first time in her
life and not a little scared.
"There must be an explanation. It's a freakish thing but I'd believe almost
anything after all we've seen. I'm sure we'll find their prints continue
farther on. Let's see."
They all walked onto the gray area for some dis-
tance. Vardia suddenly looked back to make certain that they were making
footprints, and was relieved to see that they were. Suddenly she stopped
short.
"Captain!" she exclaimed, that toneless voice sud-
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denly tinged with panic and fear. The rest caught it, stopped, and turned.
Vardia was pointing back at the ships from which they had come.
There were no shuttlecraft. There was no life-
boat. Only a bleak, unbroken orange plain stretching off to the mountains in
the distance.
"Now what the hell?" Brazil managed, looking all
around him to see if they had somehow turned around. They hadn't. He looked up
to see if he could spot anything leaving, but there was nothing but the cold
stars as darkness overtook them.
"What happened?" Hain asked plaintively. "Did our murderer "
"No, that's not it," Brazil cut in quickly, a cold chill
43
suddenly going through him. "No one person not even two could have managed all
three craft, and nobody but me could have lifted that lifeboat for an-
other two hours."
There was a sudden vibration, like a small earth-
quake, that knocked them all off their feet.
Brazil broke his fall and held on in a crouch on his hands and knees. He
looked up suddenly.
The whole area seemed bathed in eerie flashes of blue-white lightning,
thousands of them!
"Damn me for an asshead!" Brazil swore. "We've been had!"
"But by whom?" Vardia called out.
Wu Julee screamed.
Then there was nothing but darkness and that weird, blue lightning, now laced,
it appeared, with golden sparks. They all felt the sensation of falling and
turning and twisting in the air, as if they were dropping down some bottomless
pit. There was no up, no down, nothing but that dizzy sensation.
And Wu Julee kept screaming.
Suddenly they were lying on a flat, glassy-smooth black surface. Lights were
on around them, and there seemed to be a structure as if they were in some
building, like a great warehouse.
Things didn't stop spinning around for a while. They were dizzy, and sick. All
but Brazil threw up into their helmets, which neatly and efficiently cleared
the mess away. A professional spaceman, Brazil was the first to recover his
equilibrium. Then he steadied him-
self, half sitting up on the black, glassy floor.
It was a room, he saw no, a great chamber, with six sides. The glassy area was [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]