Galactic Derelict

18

Thavis sat back on his heels in the immemorial position of the dismounted range rider. The others sprawled beside the tow rope, their faces a congested red from their efforts. Renfry squirmed, braced himself on his hands and began to fumble with the latching of his helmet. He threw the bubble back and breathed hard with the immediacy of a drowning man.

“Put on your helmet, you fool!” Ashe raised his head from his arms; his voice in the com was broken by the laboring of his lungs.

But Renfry shook his head, his lips moving in words sealed away by the protection he no longer shared. Travis’ fingers went to the fastenings of his own helmet.

“I don’t think we need these.” He pulled off the bubble and lifted his head to meet the touch of a small, playful breeze. The air was crisp, like that of a Terran autumn. And it filled his lungs in an invigorating way. He reached for the rope, ready to try again.

“There’s no use in pulling ourselves blind.” Ashe’s voice was no longer rendered metallic by the alien com. “The trouble may lie back in the tower.”

Renfry began to crawl on his hands and knees back the length of the pipe, inspecting its surface as he went. At last he staggered to his feet and lurched through the door, the others after him.

They found the technician down by the mouth of the well from which the pipe extended. He was examining the covering there, trying to wriggle the flexible tube back and forth.

“The thing must be caught—below thisl” He hammered his fist against the capping.

“Can we get that lid off and see?” Ross wanted to know.

“We can try.”

But such an operation required tools of a sort—levers, wedges…. There was the line of waiting robots—could parts of their bodies be put to more practical purposes? Ross had picked up a loose “arm,” shed by the one which had disintegrated, testing the rod’s strength with all the force of his own arm and shoulder.

Travis studied the well capping. There was no opening, no vestige of crack into which a wedging tool might be inserted. And now Renfry ran his hands about the ring through which the pipe issued, striving to find by touch what none of them could see. He tapped with the rod, first lighdy and then with increasing force, leaving some dents and scratches, but making no other impression on the fitting.

“Does that unscrew?” Ross suggested.

Renfry scowled, spat out a couple of short and forceful words. He transferred his efforts from the immediate vicinity of the pipe to the outer rim of the cover. And it was there that he did make a promising discovery. They worked fast, one at each, to pick the accumulated dust of centuries out of four depressions in which were sunk knobs which might just be the heads of bolts.

Then they turned to the broken robot, dismantled its remains, until they were equipped with pieces of metal to force those heads. It was slow, disheartening work. Once Travis went back to the ship to gather up the containers of the jelly which had poisoned him during the testing of the supplies.

They smeared the stuff in and around the stubborn knobs, hoping it would lubricate and loosen, while they pounded and prodded. But their efforts were encouraged when the first bolt yielded, and Renfry used blistered fingers to work it entirely free. And that small success gave a spurt to their labors.

It was nightfall and they were working mainly by touch when Ashe’s bolt came free—the second one.

“This is it for now,” he told them. “We can’t rig any sort of light in here and there’s no use in trying to free the rest in the dark. I’ve hit my fingers more than this blasted thing for the past half hour.”

“Time may be running out on the journey tape,” Ross answered tightly. He was putting into words one of the two fears which grinned over their shoulders during all those hours of punishing labor.

“Well, we aren’t going to lift without fuel.” With a sharp exclamation and a hand to his back, Ashe stood up. “And we can’t work on in the the dark without rest or food. Those things we know—the rest we’re just guessing at.”

So they stumbled back to the ship, realizing only when they stopped the battle with the stubborn casing how completely tired they were. Travis knew that Ashe was right. They could not hope to lick the problem by driving their bodies past the point of human endurance.

They ate, more than the proper rations for the meal, wavered to their bunks, collapsing, drunk with fatigue. And Travis was still stiff in the morning when he awakened to Ross’s shaking—blinking foggily up at the other’s thin face.

“Back to the salt mines, brother!” Ross put the blackened and torn nail of an abused finger to his mouth. “I could do with a blowtorch now. Climb out of your downy bed, but fast, and join the slave gang.”

It was midmorning before they worked the fourth and last bolt out of its bed. And for a long moment after Renfry threw it from him with emphatic force, they just sat about the rim of the well, their torn and blistered hands hanging limply between their knees.

“All right.” Ashe roused. “Now let’s see if she’ll come up!”

To get levers to raise the cover they had to dismantle two more of the robots. And they carried out that destruction with a kind of savage satisfaction. Somehow, attacking the unresisting semi-manlike forms gave them release from some of the frustration and lurking fear. They achieved stout bars and went back to attack the well cover.

They never knew afterward how long it took them to pry that plug out of its bed. But a last frantic heave on the part of all, together, suddenly snapped it apart in two halves, displaying the dark hole from which the pipe arose.

Though it was day outside, as brilliantly clear a day as the one before had been, the interior of the tower was not too well lighted and they had no torch to explore those depths. Renfry lay down, to thrust both arms into the well, running his hands along the surface of the pipe as far as he could reach.

“Find anything?” Ashe crouched beside him, peering over one shoulder.

“No….” And then he changed that to a quick and excited, “YesI”

“I can barely touch it—feels as if the scaled coating on the pipe is caught.” He wriggled and Travis caught hold of his legs to anchor him.

In the end Renfry did the rest of the tedious job painfully, with frequent halts for rest. He hung head down in that pit, kept from wedging his head and shoulders in too tightly by the others’ hold on him. He had to work mainly by sense of touch, since his own body blocked out three-fourths of the already subdued light, and with improvised tools hurriedly culled from the litter about them.

The fourth time they pulled him out for a breather, he rolled over on his back and lay gasping. “I’ve pried the thing loose as far down as I can reach.” His words came one by one as if he could barely summon up the strength to push them out. “And it’s still fast farther down.”

“Maybe we can work it loose, pulling from up here.” Ashe’s hands curved about the scaled surface of the pipe where it projected over the side of the well.

“You can try.” Renfry rubbed his fists across his forehead as Travis, with a heave he tried to make gentie, moved the technician’s dead weight away from the side of the opening, to put his own hands overlapping Ashe’s.

Together they strained to move the column of the pipe inside the tube of the well. But it appeared glued to the side where Renfry had fought to free it. Beads of sweat gathered along the line of black hair above Travis’ forehead, trickled down to sting across his lips. And in the half-light he saw Ashe’s jaw line set—sharp under the thin brown skin—while the cords and muscles of his arms and shoulders stood out to be modeled under the fabric of the blue suit.

Then Ross added his weight to the effort. “You pull,” he told Ashe. “Let us push in your direction. If it is ever going to give, that ought to do it.”

For a long, long moment it seemed that the pipe was not going to give, that too much damage existed below. Then Ashe flew back, the hose striking him a forceful blow in the chest, as, out of their sight, the obstruction gave away and Ross and Travis sprawled halfway across the opening.

They scrambled up and Ross hurried to pull Ashe free of the hose. With Renfry trailing, they went back to the outer air of the port. They took up the towrope once again and began the labor of dragging the hose to meet the ship. The scaled pipe moved sluggishly, but they were winning, foot by painful foot.

Then Travis, during one of their all-too-frequent halts, glanced back and cried out. They were three-fourths of the way to their goal, but from under the belly of the hose snake was spreading a stain of moisture which gleamed in the afternoon light. That last rip to free the tube must have weakened its fabric and the burden of the unknown fuel was being lost.

Renfry stumbled back, knelt to explore, and jerked one hand away with a cry of pain. “It’s corrosive—like acid.” he warned. “Don’t touch it.”

“Now what?” Ross kicked dirt over the stain, watched the soil crumble into slime in the dark smear of fluid.

“We can get the pipe on to the ship—and hope that enough of the fuel comes through,” Ashe answered in a colorless voice. “I don’t think we can hope to mend the hose.”

And because they could see no other way out, they went back to hauling at the towrope, trying not to glance back or think of the fuel seeping out of the pipe line. Renfry nursed his burnt hand against his chest until they at last pushed the end of the hose under the curve of the globe. He got down and crawled under, grunting with pain as he fastened the head of the snake against the opening in the ship.

“Is it feeding through?” Ross asked the all-important question.

Renfry, almost as if he dreaded the answer, put his good hand palm-down on the scaled side of the pipe, holding it there for a long moment while they waited to know the future.

“Yes.”

They had no idea how much fuel the ship required—or whether the necessary amount was still available. The moist seepage along the hose continued to spread. But Renfry lay with his hand on the pipe, nodding to them from time to time that the feed of fluid was still in progress.

There came a pop like a small explosion. The head of the pipe cropped from the opening in the ship, the hose now flaccid. Renfry tapped and hammered at the cap which had slid into place, pulling down over it a second protective lock. When that clicked under his efforts he rolled out.

“That’s that. We’ve all we’re going to get.”

“Is it enough?” Travis wanted to ask—to demand. But he knew that the others were as ignorant as he of the proper answer.

They straggled back to the port ladder, somehow pulled themselves up, and made their way in a blind haze of fatigue to the cabin bunks. What they could do they had done—now their success was back again in the hands of blind fortune.

Travis roused out of a dose. The vibration in the walls— They were bound off-planet again! But were they heading home? Or would that unknown fuel only take them into space, abandon them there to drift forever?

He dreamed—of red cliffs and sage, piñón pine, and the songs of small birds in a canyon. He dreamed of the feel of a desert wind against one’s body and the surge of horse muscles between one’s legs—of a world which was, before mankind aspired to space. And it was a good dream, so good a one that even when it drifted from him after the way of dreams, Travis lay veiy still, his eyes closed, trying to will it back again.

But the sterile smell of the ship was in his nostrils, the feel of the ship was under his hands, closing around his body. And his old claustrophobic dislike of the globe was reborn with an intensity he had almost forgotten. He opened his eyes with a forced effort.

“We’re still on the beam.” Ross sat on the bunk opposite, his face hollow with strain under the blue light. He held up his hands. Both normal and scarred fingers were crossed, and he laughed as he so displayed them. “Soup’s on,” he added.

They counted the ration tins again that day. The contents of those few containers must be stretched to the limit now. Ashe measured out the portions which must serve for nourishment each waking period.

“We will just have enough if the time element remains the same. Stay in your bunks as much as possible—the less energy you burn the better.”

But a man could sleep just so much. And however earnestly they pursued that escape, there came a time when sleep fled and one could only lie, staring up, or with closed eyes, while lone minutes of waiting stretched into hours, always darkened by fears.

“I was thinking,” Ross spoke suddenly into the silence of the cabin he shared with Travis, “when we come in we should show up on the radar screens before we land. It’ll be just like some bright boy to loose off a missile, just for practice. We can’t possibly signal that we’re only space travelers coming home.”

“We’re armed.” But Travis wondered what defenses the globe did have. Missiles were top secret. Their government-other governments—could have any number of unpleasant surprises waiting to greet air-borne craft which could not adequately identify themselves.

“Dream on.” Ross sounded scornful. “I don’t see us knocking down Nike Four and all her cousins and aunts with those cannon. We don’t even know how to aim the things!”

They broke out of hyper-space, that period of discomfort heightened by their weakened condition. But in spite of that weakness, they dragged themselves to the control cabin to watch that green-patched ball grow on the vision screen. Travis discovered he was shaking, feeling almost as ill as he had during the food-testing session. Was that green ball-home? Dared they believe so—or was it a mirage they were all sharing now because they wanted it so badly? Just as the picture plate of the aliens could reproduce any man’s home site to lighten his loneliness?

But now the familiar lines of the continents sharpened. Ross’s head went down, his face hidden in his hands. And Ashe spoke slowly certain measured words Travis knew, though they were no part of his own heritage. Renfry’s hands ran back and forth along the edge of the control board, caressingly.

“She did it! She’s brought us home!”

“We aren’t down yet!” Ross didn’t lift his head and his words were sharp, as if perhaps he could insure their eventual safe landing by his very doubt of it.

“She brought us this far,” Renfry crooned. “She’ll take us the rest of the way. Won’t you, old girl?”

They met the jolt of the break into Terran atmosphere, accepted it, half numbed, still unbelieving. Ross released his hold on the chair, made for the well of the ladder.

“I’m going down.” He averted his eyes from the vision plate as if unable to watch any longer.

And suddenly Travis shared the other’s distrust of that window on space. He followed Ross, swinging down the ladder to their cabin, throwing himself prone in the bunk to await their landing—if there would be a safe landing.

The thin vibration of a take-off motor was nothing to the pressure of air against the globe skin now. It raised a hum which sang in their ears, through every atom of their tense bodies. All the waiting they had managed to put behind them was nothing compared to this last stretch they could not measure by any clock. The feeling that something might-would happen—to negate all their hard-won safety gnawed deep.

Travis heard Ross mutter on the other side of the cabin but could distinguish no words. What were they doing now? Racing night or day around the surface of their world, trying to home on the spot from which the alien journey tape had lifted them weeks ago?

Seconds crawled—minutes—hours…. One could measure this only by uneven breaths drawn with difficulty as the weight of gravity pulled once more. Were they now registering on radar screens, hostile and friendly alike, summoning a net of missiles to fence them off from the firmness of solid earth? Travis could almost picture the rise of such a bullet, trailing a spear tail of fire—coming in—

He cringed as he lay in the bunk, the soft padding rising about his gaunt body.

“Coming down.”

Had those words sounded through the ship’s com? Or were they only an echo of his own imagination?

He felt the pressure against the padding, the squeeze of chest and lungs, harder to bear because of his weakness. But he did not black out.

There was a jar, the ship rolled, settled slighdy aslant. Travis’ hands moved to the straps about him. There was complete silence. He was loathe to break it, hardly daring to move—somehow unable even now to believe that they were down, that under them must rest the brown soil of his own earth.

Ross sat up jerkily. Freeing himself from the protective harness of the bunk, he made for the door. He walked like a sick man, driven by some overwhelming force outside himself.

His voice came as a whisper. “Got—to—see….”

And then Travis knew that he must see also. He could not accept any evidence except that of his eyes. He followed Ross along the corridor—to the inner lock. And when the other fumbled at the closing, he. added his own strength to open it.

They went through the air lock, laid hold almost together on the outer port. Ross was shaking, his head hunched between his shoulders, his face gray and wet.

It was Travis who opened the door. They were facing east and the time must be early dawn, for there was a belt of shadow beneath the curve of the ship while on the horizon light banners spread pale gold. He dropped down, his eyes on that band.

“Company coming.” Ross swept out an arm. There was a soaring rumble of sound. A quartet of planes in formation cut across the light patch of sky.

There were lights flashing on about the ship—flooding away the shadows. Now Travis could pick out a buckled framework, signs of a disaster. And among the wreckage men were moving, drawing in to the star ship. But beyond them the sun was rising. His sun—rising to light his world! They had made it against all the stacked odds. Travis’ hand smoothed the skin of the globe beyond the frame of the open port, as he might have smoothed the arched neck of the pinto that had brought him through a grueling day’s ride on the range.

The sun was yellow on the distant hills. And those were made of the good brown earth of home!