Corridor of the Suns

CHAPTER V

Strapped in their chairs, they went round and round with the rolling ship, feeling the impact each time it crashed over one of the smaller trees. Then it hit something entirely too big to crush, something that stopped it with an authoritative whack, and for a moment Evers saw stars.

He shook his head to clear it. Everything was quiet and still now. He hung in the chair-straps at a sixty-degree angle, the floor of the ship being now its upper wall.

“Everybody okay?” he asked. Their voices answered shakenly in the dark, one by one. “Wait till I get down and I’ll help you down, Straw,” he said.

They presently stood on the slippery curved wall that had become the floor. A big rent had been torn open in the hull aft, and a faint ray of starlight came through it to show them the splintered beams, the torn and crumpled walls, and each other’s white faces.

He saw a glimmer of wetness in Lindeman’s eyes as he stared woefully around. “She’ll never fly again,” said Lindeman.

Evers didn’t blame him for being near to tears. It was hard on a man to cherish a dream for half a lifetime, and then have it end like this. To dream of being the Columbus of a new galaxy, to put everything you had into it, to dare all risks — and then to find you were not and never would be the first discoverer, and to come back and end your voyaging like this…

“The devil with that now,” said Evers, purposefully harsh. “We won’t go anywhere again either, unless we get out of here fast.”

As though to emphasize his words, there came from somewhere overhead the muffled, ripping B-R-ROOM — BOOM! of a ship going fast.

“They’re landing!” exclaimed Straw.

“No, not in this tangle of trees,” Evers said. “But they’ll keep buzzing the spot where we crashed, while they call Schuyler. We’ll have men here fast. Step on it!”

He shoved Lindeman and then Sharr and Straw out through the rent in the hull. He paused himself to snatch up a trio of energy-pistols, pawing for them in a buckled locker till he found them.

He squeezed out of the opening in the hull and dropped three feet to the ground, and stared around the warm, humid darkness.

Arkar had no moon and only a little starlight filtered down through the mighty branches overhead. For the Phoenix, in its rolling, had fetched up against a cluster of trunks like those of a mighty banyan, the immense branches and foliage a hundred feet over their heads. The ship had broken its back against those massive trunks.

“Smells like lilacs, somehow,” murmured Straw, and Evers instantly recognized the hauntingly sweet fragrance in the air.

“That’s what it is,” said Lindeman, nodding toward the colossal tree.

“Lilacs? You’crazy? Why—” Lindeman said, “Schuyler planted Arkar with Earth-plants, that in this chemically different soil went into giantism. The telenews had a lot about it at the time. The big man had to have the biggest flowers — damn him.”

“Will you stop chattering and move!” Evers said frantically. He grabbed Sharr’s wrist and started with her away from the wrecked ship. Lindeman and Straw followed.

The roar of the unseen hornet-ship as it went over above the lofty branches quickened them. When they were out of the shade of the giant lilac. Evers swiftly studied the stars. He remembered their bearings before the crash, and he thought he knew the direction in which Schuyler’s private spaceport lay.

He passed out the guns he had grabbed up, to Sharr and Lindeman and Straw. The guns, he thought poignantly, that they had taken with them to guard against the dangers of Andromeda.

“We haven’t got much time,” he said. “Those pilots would call the minute we crashed — there’ll be men on their way here from Schuyler’s base right now.”

“But then if we go toward the base, we’ll run right into them!” Sharr objected, and Straw said, “She’s right, Vance.”

Evers said furiously, “Do you suppose I don’t know that? It’s why we’ve got to hurry if we’re to have any chance.”

He pressed forward, leading the way. Almost at once they were in a thicket of ten-foot canes, growing so closely together that they sometimes had to squeeze between them. With a shock, Evers suddenly realized that the tall canes were in fact ordinary Earth grass. Everything here was Earth vegetation, gone into giantism. Arkar’s own native vegetation had long ago died for lack of water, and it had been Schuyler’s whim, when he had the planet seeded after giving it water, to bring all the seeds from Earth.

Evers searched the obscurity ahead for more trees. He didn’t think they had very much time. He did not know how far ahead Schuyler’s mansion and spaceport were, but it could not be very far.

A heavy perfume drifted to him on the moist air, from the right. He altered course in that direction. A grove of sixty-foot trees, stiff and angular with trunks thickly studded with foot-long spikes, loomed up before him.

Straw sniffed the air and whispered, “I’ll be damned, they’re roses.”

“We’re climbing this one,” Evers said rapidly. “If we’re lucky, they’ll go under us. You and Sharr first, Eric. I’ll help Straw get up.”

The climb should have been easy. The spikes were fairly close together and formed a good ladder all around the great trunk. Lindeman disappeared up in the darkness, and Sharr followed him up like a cat. But Straw had heavy going with one arm half-useless, and Evers had to climb beside him to steady him.

They reached a crotch, twenty feet from the ground. It was big enough to hold them if they squeezed together. Not daring now to speak, Evers made a gesture, and they crouched down.

He could feel Sharr warm beside him. She was not trembling, but the rapid pounding of her heart was right against him. He was afraid of her losing her nerve and patted her hand encouragingly. She made a small sound like a sniff of resentment.

The drowsing, heavy tide of perfume flowed down on them from above and he could glimpse the outline of the giant blooms up there, against the starry sky.

Sharr stiffened against him. Her ears had been quicker than his. It was moments later before he heard the sound of men coming.

Evers peered down. The men were not trying to be utterly silent, but neither were they making any unnecessary noise. They were strung in a line, ten feet apart, and advanced in the direction where the wreck lay, turning their porta-lights this way and that.

They moved fast, and went past the clump of giant rose-trees in a minute. Evers waited till their lights were out of sight, and then whispered,

“When they find the wreck and us not in it, they’ll spread out fast. Hurry!”

They pressed forward, and came to a clearing in the giant vegetation. Lindeman tripped on a loose stone, and then Evers saw that around them were low, ancient, crumbling walls of dark stone, eaten down by time so that only broken bits of them remained. He knew these were some of the remnants of the long-perished people of ancient Arkar, pathetic shards of a folk gone ages ago. But he had no time to feel that pathos, he felt too naked and exposed in this clear place, and pushed the others forward.

Ten minutes later the four of them crouched in the deep shadow of big, bushy, fronded trees that Evers thought might be peonies, and looked out into an open space.

Here was the real nerve-center of a vast industrial empire. Far across the galaxy stretched the great mines and smelters and spaceports of Schuyler Metals. But here, on this privately owned planet, was the home of the man who was Schuyler Metals. The fabulous mansion itself was not in sight. But this was the spaceport that served it.

It was too big, this spaceport. Far too big for a few private yachts. It had docks for a score of ships, with aprons and cranes and work-pits. In five of the docks, star-ships loomed up into the night, and they too were far too big for mere private use. Between the docks and the four fugitives, large metal warehouses glinted dully in the light of suspended krypton-arcs.

Sounds of activity came to them from the far side of the docks. Some of them were the ordinary sounds of men working with tools and machines around ships. But there were other, heavier, clanking sounds that Evers didn’t like. He hoped Schuyler had no Workers here. Men they might be able to face, but Workers were another matter.

“You were right, Evers,” whispered Lindeman. “He’s running the Andromeda operation from here. Those warehouses—”

Evers looked at his watch and calculated swiftly. “It’ll be at least twelve hours before those GC cruisers following us get here,” he said. “If we can get into the warehouses, we can hide till then. When the GC cruisers arrive, we’ll surrender to them — and show them Schuyler’s loot and special ships!”

“That should give them all the proof they want.” muttered Straw. “All right, let’s get at it.”

Sharr said suddenly, “No, wait.”

“Wait? For what?”

The Valloan girl, lying flat beside them, had been searching the edges of the compound with her eyes. Now she pointed.

“See the shrubs planted here and there around the edge? Why should they be planted there? There’s a little metal post inside that one clump — I can just glimpse it.”

Evers understood, and turned a little cold. He said, “Detectors?”

She nodded her red head. “I think a hidden network of beams around the whole compound.”

Straw swore softly. “Never thought of that. Say, this wench’s being from that thieves’ world comes in handy.”

Sharr bristled up at that, turning her head with her green eyes flaring, but Evers hastily pressed her arm.

“Shut up, Straw. We’ve got to figure how to get through the beam.”

He couldn’t think of any way. Sharr whispered that the beam would surely be too high and too deep to leap over or dig under. Their whispered conference was interrupted by the distant roar of a motor.

A half-trac loaded with men, its headlights flaring, was racing across the compound in their general direction.

“Oh, oh — they’ve found the Phoenix empty and have called back for more searchers,” said Straw.

“They’ll have to go out through the beam,” Evers said rapidly. “Here’s our chance. Be ready to jump when that trac crosses the line.”

His idea was simple, but he thought it would work. When the half-trac crossed the detector beam, the alarms would register automatically — unless they lifted the beam for a moment. In either case, it was the one moment when they themselves could cross without arousing notice.

The half-trac, avoiding the clump of peony-trees in which they crouched, reached the edge of the compound a few hundred yards from them. As it cut across invisible beams, loud bells rang clangorously somewhere back on the spaceport. The iron clangor ceased a moment later, as the half-trac plunged on out into the forest.

But during that moment of clangoring alarms, Evers and his three companions had plunged across the invisible barrier. They ran low through the dim starlight toward the shadow of the nearest warehouse, and crouched against the cool metal wall.

Evers, looking along the wall, said, “No doors this side. I want a look in here. We’ll look in all these warehouses till we find what we’re after.”

“Yeah,” said Straw. “Well, having Starr along will help us. You know the saying, Set a thief—”

In a hissing whisper, Sharr said to Evers, “I will stun this man if he calls me more names.”

“He’s only kidding rough,” Evers said hastily. “Anyway, I know that on Valloa the hereditary profession of thief is no disgrace.”

“It is not, but when an Earthman says it, it is different!”

“Why the devil did you have to get her going?” Evers demanded of Straw. “Is this any time for your brand of teasing? Eric—”

But Lindeman was not beside them. The little scientist had crept away around the corner of the warehouse.

They followed hastily, holding their guns. They found Lindeman beside the warehouse door.

“Locked,” he said.

“I could blast the lock but it’d be noisy,” Evers said. “Do you think you can open it, Sharr?”

“I will not for Earthmen who laugh at thieves,” she said sulkily.

He took her by her bare shoulders and spoke to her, his voice an earnest whisper. “We look on such things differently on Earth, and you must not mind what Straw said. This is our only chance, Sharr.”

She was silent, and then she said, “I’ll try.”

From inside the belt of her silken pants she took two delicate steel probes, as thin as wires. In the darkness, her fingers explored the heavy lock and then she crouched close to it and began to work.

They waited, not happy about waiting, with a coming and going of half-tracs audible far across the compound. Evers thought it was lucky that the search in the forest seemed to have pulled everyone away from the warehouse area, but he didn’t think their luck would go on much longer.

Something clicked in the lock, and Sharr drew back. She said triumphantly, “There were alarm-wires in it — but I shorted them before I opened the lock.”

“You’re wonderful,” he told her, and meant it. He slid the door open a little more than a foot, and they went quickly inside.

Lindeman’s pocket torch sent its little beam angling around the dark interior. He uttered an exclamation.

“This stuff is from Andromeda, all right — look at those things! Plastic and metal bonded together, just like the things we saw in that K’harn city.”

He was swinging the beam around and it illuminated the strange tangle of objects that half-filled the warehouse.

These instruments and machines were unearthly and looked it, the product of a technology and a psychology utterly alien to this galaxy. Silvery metal disks hung suspended in an oval plastic framework, in one incomprehensible gadget. Next to it towered an eight-foot-high cluster of diverging metal rods that sprang from a cage-like metal base, the base being linked by thick ribbons of a darker metal to a black cube. There was a thing of crystal spheres grouped around a larger sphere that looked almost like an enormous toy. Yes, they had seen objects like these in the faraway alien cities of the K’harn.

Evers felt staggered by the sheer magnitude of Schuyler’s depredations. Here was a plundered science brought home from the farthest shores of space, from worlds that were old when Earth was still savage. He had seen some of those robbed worlds, and he thought of the sum of agony that these things had cost.

“Wait till GC gets here and we show them this stuff!” crowed Straw. “It’s proof enough to cook Schuyler for—”

Evers suddenly motioned Lindeman to snap out his torch, and ran to the closed door and laid his ear against it. “Listen!”

In the sudden silence, he heard trac-cars roaring past the warehouse. One of the cars pulled up and then he heard voices, loud and urgent.

“Check every warehouse! They’re not out in the forest and the boss says they must be here or in the docks!”

Startlingly loud outside the door at which Evers listened, came another voice. “Hey, Alden, look here! This lock’s been tampered with—”

Evers jumped back as the door slid suddenly open. A man, with a heavy pistol in his hand, appeared in the opening silhouetted against the glimmer of starshine outside.

Instantly, Evers notched his gun to stunner strength and shot. His beam dropped the man in a huddled heap.

Outside, the first voice yelled, “They’re in there — get them!”

There was a rush of feet.

“Stunner-power!” Evers exclaimed. “We’ll have enough explaining to do for GC without dead men.”

Four or five men piled through the doorway in a rush. They hadn’t a chance, coming into the dark, interior of the warehouse against the light outside. The beams of the three men and Sharr dropped them before they could shoot.

More half-tracs were roaring up and stopping outside. Then the loud voice called.

“Lindeman! Come out with your hands empty and you won’t be hurt! You and Straw and Evers haven’t got a chance!”

Evers shouted back. “Next time, it’ll be lethal beams — better stay out!”

He whispered to the others then,

“If we could hold them till the GC ships come, we’d be all right.”

“Yeah,” said Straw, without conviction. “Twelve hours, maybe. We’d be all right if we can do that.”

Time went by, and more half-tracs came, and they waited in the dark Then they heard that same voice outside, not too far from the open door.

“Don’t go any nearer, Mr. Schuyler — they might make a rush out.”

A hard, flat voice answered him. “What the devil’s the matter with you, Alden? We haven’t got all night. Get a Worker over here and use it.”

Lindeman started to move forward. “It’s Schuyler. I’m going out there and get him. I saw those Andromeda worlds, I—”

He was almost babbling in his shaking rage. Evers caught him and held him back. “Don’t be a fool, our only chance is to wait them out.”

“What is a Worker?” Sharr asked worriedly.

Evers said, “The Workers are the big remote-controlled robots used for heavy jobs. Schuyler used some of them, fitted up with destruction-beams, out there at Andromeda, from what we heard. I was afraid he’d have some of them here.”

He made up his mind. “Listen, Sharr, they don’t know you’re here with us. They’d never guess that you, who tried to sell me to them, would jump Valloa with us. You hide back in the loot here. When it’s over, wait till GC gets here and then if you get a chance, tell the GC men about everything.”

“I won’t hide!” she said instantly. “Earthmen may think Valloans are thieves, but nobody ever thought us cowards!”

“I know you’re not afraid,” he said. “But it won’t help if Schuyler gets you too. And you can help us by hiding till you can tell GC the truth.”

She was silent, and now they could hear a steely, thumping sound outside, an odd but regular rhythm, getting closer and louder.

“All right,” Sharr finally said, reluctantly, and slipped back into the darkness.

They waited. The steely sound was now a heavy, measured clanking outside the door.

The half-open warehouse door suddenly opened wide, and in it there loomed up the towering silhouette of a Worker.