Postmarked the Stars

15.RESCUE ATTEMPT

At last they had real food again. Dane sat at the table where a round of cold lathsmer breast was flanked by a hash of native grains and berries and found it very good indeed after days on one-quarter E-ration tube per meal. Outside, the night closed in, and Tau kept close watch on the semiconscious Cartl, who now and then muttered unintelligibly. There had been no return of those who had gone to Vanatar’s, nor of the men who had taken off after them. Nor any sound from the com they had left turned on low, save the clatter that cut them off from help.

“How far are we from the LB?” Dane drank the last of a heated brew and set down his mug to face Meshler squarely.

Twice the ranger had gone to the wall map and studied its lines, ever running his finger along some as if to assure himself they were recorded there. Now he approached the the table.

“Perhaps two hours’ flying time at normal speed,” he answered. “But why? Your men won’t be there. They were to be picked up soon after we left. And they would take the box, too.”

“Would they?” questioned Tau. “What about the detect report? I don’t think that would register if the box had been taken all the way to the port. What do you have in mind?” he asked of Dane.

“If we had the box and brought it south, I wonder—could it draw the monsters away?” He was fishing, grasping for any hope, no matter how small.

Tau was shaking his head. “Not when we don’t know enough about its action. Dane, get me some more of that drink!”

Cartl was moving in the thick wrappings of covers the medic kept piled about him, striving to rid himself of their weight. Dane went to the steaming pot, poured out what was left—half a mug of the aromatic stuff—and brought it to the medic.

“Take it easy now.” Tau spoke Basic and supported the settler with an arm about his shoulder. He set the cup to Cartl’s mouth, and the other drank off its contents thirstily. Then with Tau’s help he sat up, pushing aside the covers. He was no longer shaking, and there was intelligence and purpose back in his dark face.

“How long was I out?” was his demand.

“About three hours,” Tau answered. “You must have been in the last stages of this bout.”

“Angria—the children—the rest of them?”

He must have read the answer on Tau’s face. His hand went to the back-belted knife. “Then—” But he did not finish that foreboding.

“Listen.” Dane moved around in front of him. He did not know what Cartl pushed by fear for his family might do, but he felt that it was now or not at all that he must discover whether the settler had the experience to tackle the com problem. “The com’s still jammed. But there is a way we might just get a message through and ask for help.”

Cartl frowned. He did not look at Dane at all. Instead, he had drawn the honor knife and was running the blade lightly across the ball of his thumb, as if testing its keenness.

“The com’s jammed,” he repeated absently. Then he turned to Meshler. “You came in a flitter. Let me take that—I’m free of the shakes now.”

“For how long?” Tau’s demand was so emphatic that it caught Cartl’s attention, and he did look to the medic. “You are over this bout, yes. But cold will bring on another. And if you start and then black out, what good will that do you or anyone else? Listen to Thorson here. You may not have heard of what he has to say, but we know that it worked before in a similar situation. You are a com-tech by training, so this should be a way to help your people.”

“What is it then?” Now Cartl did give his attention to Dane, but there was an impatience about him, as if he expected to hear nothing of use and resented the trouble of giving judgment.

“I’m no com-tech, and I don’t know your technical terms—but this is what a Free Trader did when his ship was jammed by a jack after his cargo.” And he gave the story stripped to bare details.

The knife, which had been moving back and forth in Cartl’s fingers when Dane had started, was still.

“Counter-interference in pulse pattern,” the settler said. “And what kind of code?”

“Nothing elaborate. Just identification and a call for help.”

Cartl returned the honor knife to its sheath. “Yes. And if Kaysee did not get through—” He rose, swaying for a moment but avoiding the hand Tau advanced to steady him. Then he went to the com.

A touch on the switch brought the crackle up to louder waves of sound. Cartl listened intently. His lips moved. He might have been counting.

Then he pulled out a seat and half fell into it, still with that intent, listening look. He reached under the table on which part of the equipment was based and brought out a box of tools. Unscrewing a panel, he switched off the receiver and then went to work, slowly, almost fumblingly at first, and then with more speed and surety. At last he leaned back, his hands resting on the edge of the table, his shoulders drooping a little, as if his labor had exhausted what small strength he had regained.

“That’s it. But will it work?” He seemed to be asking that of himself, not of the three behind him.

The brach had been stretched out before the fire, basking in the heat. But now he sat up on his haunches, his forepaws folded over his belly. His head was not turned toward the men in the corner, but there was about the alien an aura of listening that caught Dane’s attention, and he watched the brach rather than Cartl, who had set two wires delicately together and was now tapping in a broken rhythm.

Dane crossed to sit on the cot Cartl had lately left.

“What is it?” He had picked up his thermo jacket and spoke into the hood mike.

“There is coming,” replied the brach.

“Of that which we must fear?” Dane asked quickly.

“There is fear—but it lies with those who come. And there is hurt also—”

“How near?”

The brach’s head swung slowly back and forth, as if his long nose was pointer for a detect.

“Coming fast, but not yet here.” That seemed evasive. “There is fear, much, much fear. And all have it.” Dane arose and spoke to the others. “The brach says some are coming. He says they are hurt and afraid.”

In spite of that loud mixture of sound from the com, Cartl must have heard. He swung around to face Dane. “When?”

“The brach says they are coming fast.”

Cartl was already on his feet. He did not reach for the shaggy coat he had worn cloakwise earlier, but he did pause to snatch up his weapon. And Meshler was at the door before him, blaster in hand.

They ran for the gate of the fort, Cartl in the lead. The others caught up with him only after he had leaped to a ledge along one of the gate side buildings from which they could see the outer world. The moon was bright, and under it the snow gave back sparks of glitter.

Now they could hear it. There was no wind high enough to hide the steady beat of a flitter engine. Cartl gave a cry of relief and leaned out to hit a button, so that lights flared on, marking a landing space. Meshler half raised an arm as if to turn them off but did not.

There were no running lights on the flier. It came in dark and somehow ominous under the moon. When it set down, they saw that it was larger than the one they had stolen from the basin camp, almost double the size of the one carried by the Queen. Round-bellied, it was obviously intended to carry cargo, but now both cabin and cargo hatches sprang open, and a group of figures spilled out so hurriedly onto the field that

several stumbled and fell, others stooping to pull them up again, as if those inside were prisoners seeking freedom. Leaving the doors hanging open behind them, they made for the gate. One of the monsters might have been pounding at their heels.

Women—three, four, five, six—children to such a number that they must have been packed shoulder to shoulder inside. And behind them men, two with bandages, helping a third between them who made a stumbling, futile effort to walk.

Cartl threw open the gate and sprang to seize one of the women, one who had two children, one clinging to each hand. As he held her tight, the others crowded around them, crying out in some planet dialect the Terrans could not understand.

But Tau pushed past the women and reached the wounded, with Meshler and Dane only a step or two behind. With their aid he got the three back to the room they had just left.

It was sometime later they heard the full story. These were the women of Cartl’s holding and with them three of Vanatar’s group, plus the children of both. The wounded consisted of two of Cartl’s men and one, who was the worst mauled, of Vanatar’s.

They had had little warning. As Cartl had earlier believed, they had been spread out through the fields overseeing clearing robos, the women setting up fires to heat drinks and tending pots of food. Without warning then the nightmare had come. Their accounts of what they had seen and fled from were so varied that Dane deduced the larger part of the attacking force had been made up of more than one type of monster, all of them so alien to what the settlers knew that that very alienness added to the fright and horror.

Some of the work force had rallied quickly enough to trigger the robos in the fields to cover their retreat, and the settlers had broken into several groups. The ones reaching Cartl’s had luckily been close enough to the flitter park to fight their way there. But even then, they were not to escape easily, for the monsters were only the first wave of that hideous army. Behind were men, and they had used blasters, though from several accounts, mainly one from the men, the strangers had been both driving on the monsters and defending themselves from them.

A flitter had come to hover over the vehicle park, and a line of monsters had trailed along behind it, almost as if led on a leash. There had been a fight, two of them. And two parked flitters had been smashed past getting into the air, so the settlers’ first plan for evacuating this party to Cartl’s and then reaching one of the other isolated groups had failed.

“Got them then—” one of the men wearing a bandage down his left arm, strapped to his body, said. “Vanatar had a burner mounted on a crawler and was going to use it on thick brush. Yashty and I reached that. Got that sky-scum in the center. Then Cartl’s ship came in so we could take off with the women. I wasn’t much use with the arm, and Yashty got a knock on the head, but together we could make one pilot. Asmual had taken a nasty one and was laid out proper. So Thanmore said for us to get out while the air was still clear. They would hold the park with Cartl’s men and maybe get that crawler with the burner started so it could make it to the upside. We could still hear them going at that, so we knew some of our people reached it. But even if they hold out a while, they can’t do it forever. They have the robos for their main defense and a small burner, but not much else.”

“How many of you reached there?” the ranger wanted to know.

The man shook his head. “No telling. We were the largest group, most all women and children. I saw three—three at least get it from those devil things. And two were burned down at the yard before we wiped out that air scum.”

“This upside—” Meshler interrupted. “Where is it in relation to the park?”

For a moment the man shut his eyes, as if trying to mentally picture the refuge site. Then he answered, “South a field and then east. It’s a big outcrop of rough rock. Vanatar thought it could be made into an extra-secure roost, and he ordered us not to blast it out. It’s the best defense they could find there.”

“No flitter landing near it?”

The man shook his head. “Only in open ground, and there you’d have to fight off those things. If they haven’t overrun the rocks—”

“Could your men get out if a flitter went on hover and we used air rescue belts?” persisted the ranger.

“I don’t know.”

The technique the ranger suggested was a tricky one. Dane had seen it done at training stations, but the Queen’s men had never had to put it into practice. And did the settlers have the proper tackle?

His question was put into words by the other more lightly wounded man.

“You have a rescue flitter here? You’d need the belts and shock lines. And you’ll have to hover low. They’re using blasters, and if you got down to the right level, one sweep would cut a belt rope.”

“We can set the hover on low.” Meshler sounded confident, but Dane thought this the wildest suggestion yet. He looked about the room. Tau was busy with the badly wounded man. His place would certainly be here. The three who had come in with the refugee flitter were in no state to go back, and Cartl might have a relapse if he made such an effort at present, which meant that the rescue mission would fall on two of them, Meshler and himself.

The ranger did not ask for volunteers. He put them all, save Tau, to work, improvising the equipment needed. They had finally a bulky belt, plus a double-woven steelion rope and a pulley hoist, which occupied so much of the interior of the flitter that Dane could not see how they could take off more than two, or at the most three, of the refugees at a time. In addition, they had to use the slower flying cargo flitter in order to rig such an installation at all. And even Cartl warned them that any overload of weight on hover might break that down.

But at dawn they took off, Meshler again as pilot, Dane and the brach, who at the last minute added himself to their company, housed in the stripped rear beside the hoist.

“This is bad.” Dane tried to urge the alien to stay behind. “We go into much danger.”

“Go with you, come with you, always, with you go our own place,” the brach stated firmly, as if in Dane alone he had any hope of returning to his mate and family. And knowing how the alien’s talents had helped them in the past, Dane could not have him put out bodily.

With the directions of the refugees for a guide, Meshler pushed the flitter at the top speed that the lumbering craft could maintain. Behind them the people of Cartl’s holding were preparing for a state of siege, while Cartl himself had gone back to the com, though he seemed to have little faith in the experiment he tried.

There was no storm, but the day was gray, and the sun was a very pallid spot of light, well veiled by clouds. Save for their two blasters, they carried no arms. And Dane tried not to imagine what would happen if the enemy had captured one of the burners and turned it aloft to singe out any attempt at rescue.

When they came in over the fields where Vanatar and his people had been clearing, the ragged scars of the interrupted work were beacon enough. The tangle of the flitter the refugees had brought down lay in a burned-out mess, eclipsing in part two crawlers it had crashed upon.

From that wreckage a lance of blaster fire shot at their own craft. Friend believing them enemy, or enemy trying to blast any rescue attempt? At any rate, that spear of light had come from a hand weapon, lacking power to reach them, though were they to descend, it might make a direct hit—

Meshler brought the flitter around, away from the park. The machine, never meant for fast or limited space maneuvering, needed all his attention at the controls. But it was the brach who gave them their lead.

“Much fear—pain—that way—” He pointed with his nose. Dane interpreted, and Meshler headed in the new direction.

They caught sight of the rocks. They looked from above almost as if they were some artificial erection rather than natural outcropping, though they stood in no pattern, only raised a mass of erosion-pitted stone skyward.

Meshler guided the flitter in closer. Halfway across the roughly cleared field was an overturned crawler. From it pointed the ugly snout of a burner, and where that lay against the soil, there was a long streak of black and smoking soil ribboning from it. Apparently the machine had been overturned with the burner going at full blast, and that had remained on to sear and roast the ground until its heating unit was exhausted.

But it had taken toll before it had been defeated. There were three half-burned carcasses on its back trail, and all of them suggested that in life they had been monstrous. More nightmare things, however, were left to prowl around the rocks, though they did not essay to attack, mainly because scuttling back around the rocky outcrop were three robo clearers, their long, jointed arms with scraper and slasher attachments at ready, threshing the air in a whirl of threat.

Two more robos had suffered. One whipped around in a dizzy circle, two smashed arms trailing behind it, bumping on the ground, half the control box that served it for a head melted away. The other did not move. Apparently its progress circuits had been shorted in some manner, but it whipped and banged the ground in a frenzy.

That these, too, had left their dead was plain from corpses cut and slashed, four of them. But the robos were good only as long as their charges lasted. Even as the flitter went into hover over the stones, two of those keeping sentry go were slowing, and one came to a complete stop, its armored arms raised high, remaining frozen so.

Meshler was fighting the controls of the flitter. As Cartl had warned, the awkward cargo carrier did not have the maneuverability of the craft he was more used to, and he was finding it hard to judge just the right height. Those below must have recognized the craft, for they waved wildly from behind the shadow of stones.

Dane kicked open the hatch and made ready to swing out the belt, but the contrary flitter was bucking, refusing to settle into a steady hover, so that the equipment swung back and forth. Whether the hoist would work, Dane dared not guess. They could only try.

He watched the belt flop loosely down, keeping the rope from tangling. That it had reached its goal he knew when the rope jerked its signal. Now—

He spoke to the brach. “Watch, see if all goes well. I must work this—”

The alien trotted to the hatch and thrust his head out, bracing his feet against one side for hold against the swing of the craft.

“They put fast a man—he has hurts—”

Sending up wounded first. Dane wished they had had the forethought to bring up at least one able-bodied helper on the first try. If the belt did not hold—

He started the hoist, fastened to the motor Cartl and one of the refugees had bolted in hurriedly. The rope went taut, and there was a groan from the motor as the strain began. It took the weight very slowly, too slowly—yet there was nothing he could do except squat here and watch it, make sure that the motor kept on working and the rope fed back evenly

The wait seemed endless, and then the brach reported. “One is here—he cannot aid himself.”

“Come here.” Dane made a swift decision. “Watch—if this rope loosens, call!”

He scrambled past the brach, who obediently came to the hoist. The belt spun just below the hatch, the man in it limp and still, having been trussed inside the lift by a patchwork of tatters knotted together. With infinite care Dane got him in, bathed in sweat that was not induced by heat when he laid him on the floor. He tried to take care in loosening those fastenings. Then once more he kicked out the belt and let it fall on the line.

There was no time to examine the first arrival. Meshler did not even look around, his concentration on the controls was such that now he seemed a part of the craft he fought to master.

Once more that jerk on the line, the arrival of another injured man, but this time conscious, able to help himself.

As Dane uncoiled the lashing that held him in the belt, he said, “How many more of you?”

“Ten,” the settler replied.

Ten! They could not pack that many in here, not with the hoist taking up so much room. It would mean two trips—and did they have time for that? He threw out the belt again, asked the settler to watch the hoist, and then edged up to Meshler.

“There are twelve. We can’t take them all.”

Meshler did not turn from the controls as he answered, “We’re on borrowed time. We may not be able to make a second trip.”

That was obvious. But it was also plain that they could not hope to overload the flitter and get away. So far all they had seen of the enemy were the patrolling monsters outside the robo ring and that one blaster shot from the vehicle park. But that did not mean there had been any retreat.

Suddenly the flitter gave a lurch, just as if they had been jerked ahead on an invisible line. Their hover had been broken. They were moving from the rocks.

“Control beam!” the ranger cried. “It’s weak, but with this craft I can’t break it.”

Control beam! They were being reeled in again, just as they had been in the other flitter. Another crash? “What the—” He heard the second wounded man in the back cry out, “We’re going past the rocks!”

Dane got back to the hatch. Below them dangled the belt. They were already past the rocks, and it was a mercy no one had been in it.

“Look!”

He saw the belt settle as the beam brought them lower and suddenly hook over the up-thrust arm of a robo that had run down. To be so forceably anchored in an instant was the final mishap. In spite of Meshler’s skill, the nose of the flitter went sharply up, and they headed tailward to the earth.