“They wanted room to grow, and no one knew about the skikes.”
“Well, you were right about the island.”
It wasn’t much of a comfort. Doug had known all along he was right ннн he’d been there. Now it was a question of whether or not he would live to see it again.
Lipton finished loading up the orbiter and was off. Doug watched the luminous trail as it shot across the night sky, wishing he was on it this time. Then he thought about Janet and Cromwell in the capsule, and realized they were over there without a defense system. He climbed into the flier and turned on the communications unit, and called out his wife’s name.
“Doug! Thank god!” she said immediately.
“How’re you holding up over there?”
“The jungle is one big mass of skikes!” she said. “They’re so thick around the capsule you can’t see the ground. Doug, how are you going to get us out of here?”
That’s a good question, he thought. “Is there any danger of them getting inside? They shouldn’t be able to get through that metal alloy with anything less than a laser torch.”
“We’re safe so far,” she said. “Just scared and feeling trapped.”
“How’s Cromwell’s head?”
“He’s got a mild concussion, Douglass, but you didn’t answer my question.”
“I’m busy keeping skikes out of the village grounds, Janet.
You’re just going to have to sit tight, you’re safer than anyone right now.” The defense system fired practically at the tower’s foundation, the beam so close to the flier that it gave Doug radiation burns. A skike writhed in death spasms in a hole almost straight down. “Gotta go,” he told his wife, and turned off the communicator. “Jahk!” he yelled. “They’re going to be coming up right under us! They’ll be coming up inside the huts!” And on the other side of huts, too, he thought. The defense system won’t be able to shoot at something it doesn’t see.
The defense system fired once, twice, again almost at the base of the tower. Some of the colonists were yelling; a skike had come up between two of the huts. As it wandered out and in sight of the defense system it was killed.
Doug eyed the huts. Jahk was jumping from one roof to another, yelling. There was muted screams from inside some of them. As Doug watched, the hut that Jahk was standing on collapsed and fell. A skike grabbed his frantic body and pulled him underground before the defense system could strike.
“Jahk!” Doug yelled, but his voice was drowned out by the blasts. He’d raised his rifle, but there was nothing to shoot at.
There was nothing he could do but fidget.
The tower wavered. He looked down, seeing nothing … but Doug knew. This was it. The skikes were under the foundation. He looked up to see a few more of the huts fall. Yes, the skikes were learning all right. They were learning how to win.
There was a jolt that nearly threw Doug down to the ground.
Even over the blasts he could hear the sharp cracking of timbers.
Doug leapt into the flier and began ripping connections loose, yelling for the men who were up there with him to climb in. Only two made it, then the foundation sank, undermined, and the tower was falling. The top of it hit the flier on it’s way down, sending it spinning out of control across the village. Doug and the two other men hung on. Doug’s rifle flew right off of his shoulder and down to the ground, lost.
The gyros kicked in and stopped the spinning, leaving him dazed. The defense system was dead, but there were still blasts. A few men were still left with rifles, leaping from hut to hut and firing away. Gotta get them on board, he thought, and staggered to the controls of the flier. Flashing lights indicated damage. Just keeping the flier in the air was draining the power supply at an alarming rate. Hell, Doug thought. Hell and damn.
He nudged the flier toward the closest huts, collecting several men, then over to the common building where there were several more. “Hang from the sides,” Doug told them after no more could fit in the flier. “Just hang on.” There was an electric whining sound from somewhere in the flier, and he could smell hot metal. The thing was not meant to hold this much weight. Hell with it, he thought. Better to die of a fall than to be chopped up by those beasts. He looked down to see the village grounds were black and swarming with them, indistinct and nightmarish in the pale light of the dying flair globes. Maybe, he thought, if we fall on one we’ll take it with us.
There was a buzzing and a large red light flashed on the control panel. The flier was now on emergency auxiliary power and was demanding that he land immediately. Yeah, right, Doug thought.
Land where? Instead, he sent the craft up into the sky, a platform jammed with men, men hanging over the sides, men hanging from men.
Doug could hardly move. They got up above the level of the flair globes and drifted out over the jungle, which was black and crawling with shapes. The whole skike population of the continent must be here now, he thought. One good fusion blast and maybe the mainland could be colonized. The thought was almost funny. If there was a fusion self-destruct on the flier he would have used it. Instead, the best he could hope for is to smash a couple of them when the flier dropped.
One of the men hanging onto the side lost his grip and fell.
He dropped silently, lost into the murk of the night. Doug continued, uninterrupted. This is it, he was thinking. This is how it happens. Death by falling, sudden and quiet. I won’t yell when it happens, I won’t close my eyes. I’ll go face down staring at the ground.
Another red light on the panel was flashing erratically, trying to get his attention. He glanced down and saw it was a proximity alert. Proximity? he thought, confused. He was certain it was a malfunction. He looked around doubtfully for something close to them and saw the orbiter approaching, door open. Lipton was yelling, “Be careful! Climb in one at a time!” He moved the door right up to the edge of the flier and the men began climbing in, turning and helping others in. Doug watched with a stunned calmness. He had been prepared to die. He was still prepared to die. Finally it was just down to himself and another man, and that man was Kinjon. Kinjon gripped Doug’s arm with a strong hand and pulled. They weren’t in the orbiter longer than a minute when the flier dropped. It just disappeared silently and was gone.
Doug looked after it with a sense of wonder.
#
It was a bright, windy day when they returned to the mainland. They avoided the village, not really wanting to see it, and circled around from behind, coming down carefully through the trees. There was not a skike in sight.
Janet and Cromwell were outside the capsule, waiting nervously. They scrambled aboard as soon as the hatch opened.
“Come on!” Cromwell was saying. “Get this damn thing in the air.
Let’s get moving!”
Lipton stared at him with hatred but remained silent.
Doug disabled the controls with a password and said, “We came here for something besides you.”
“What?” Janet said. “For Selene? She’s still in stasis, nothing’s going to bother her.”
“Yeah.” Doug and Lipton climbed down out of the orbiter without an explanation, and walked over to the capsule. Doug unlocked the door and they entered.
The automed unit was warm, quiet. Inside part of it was Selene, laying in a dreamless, timeless solitude. Both men stood in front of it for a few minutes, then Lipton began taking off his clothes.
The automed held room for one more.
They didn’t say anything to each other. They just shook hands. Lipton climbed in and it cycled shut, and Doug waited around to make sure he went into stasis without any problems. I’ll see you again, Doug thought. When Technica comes back, I’ll say goodbye. Not now.
He left the capsule, locking the door behind him. Lipton wanted to be with his wife. He wouldn’t have survived the next six years without her, knowing she was all alone in this jungle, a thousand kilometers away. Doug had approved. If he’d had Selene for a wife, he would have done the same.
Doug’s wife was in the orbiter, waiting. He climbed in and shut the door, and stood staring at her where she sat, far away from Cromwell. He didn’t say anything. He hadn’t made his mind up about her, yet.
It was Cromwell he spoke to. “I am now in charge,” he said.