“Show me how to use it,” said Sandy. Grudgingly Boyle led him around the far side of the ship, toward the open runway. Sandy got only a glimpse of the lander, fully erected, with its brightly colored shrapnel shroud already in place. More than anything else the lander looked like a praying mantis gift-wrapped for Christmas.
It didn’t take long for Boyle to explain safety, sights, and trigger to Sandy. Warned, he braced his arm when he fired it for the first time. Even so the recoil was a surprise. It wasn’t noisy, though. The sound of firing was only a sharp thwuck, rather than the violent explosion he had imagined, but it made a second, louder sound when the charge struck what it was aimed at (or anyway, where it happened to go by courtesy of his inexpert marksmanship). It blew craters a foot deep in the runway as it hit.
Lysander shook his head, turning to Boyle. “That’s no good. I could blow the lander up if I hit the wrong place.”
Boyle said, “Well, I suppose we could give you solid rounds instead of the h.e., but I don’t know if they would kill a Hakh’hli.”
“They won’t know that,” Lysander said. “Give me the rounds.”
Even a dedicated Hakh’hli would not spend days and weeks in the lander if he could help it; it was too cramped, too bare, too uncomfortable—certainly too boring. The humans had obligingly airlifted a sort of cabin in. It was smaller than the common room the cohort had shared back on the big ship. But then, Sandy thought somberly, the cohort was a lot smaller now, too. He saw Bottom peering out of the lander hatch, just above the rodded stick they used for a ladder. Sandy waved to him but didn’t speak. He walked to the door of the Hakh’hli dorm and stood there, looking in.
Tanya and Helena were huddled over a television set. Fortunately it wasn’t in communications mode; they were simply watching the bland Earth networks, long since censored of any news that might disturb the Hakh’hli. Tanya turned to look at Sandy with surprise. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ll show you,” he said in Hakh’hli, putting a finger to his lips.
“Show us what? And what was that noise we heard a little while ago?” Helena grumbled.
Sandy said secretively, “I don’t know. Something the Earth humans were doing, I guess. Don’t waste time.” He peered out the door. “Follow me, and don’t attract attention. All of you. You too, Tanya. Don’t even use the communicator, just come on.”
He didn’t wait for a response. He went out of the cabin, conspicuously nonchalant as he walked toward the tail of the rocket. It cast a long shadow in the hot, late summer day; and he could see by the shadows beside him that the two Hakh’hli were following him.
Marguery was standing at the tail of the rocket, gazing upward as instructed. Tanya stopped short beside Sandy. “Why have you brought the Earth-female here?” she demanded, licking her tongue out suspiciously.
Sandy said easily, “Look and see.” He pointed to a perfectly featureless point on the shroud, and said, “There.”
“There what?” Helena grumbled.
Tanya grunted in annoyance, stretched as high as she could on her long, thick legs, and said peevishly, “I don’t see any—”
That was as far as she got. She toppled forward on her face even before Sandy heard the thwick of the gas gun. Helena managed to whirl long enough to catch sight of Boyle’s sharpshooters, but not in time to do herself any good. It was a fast-acting anesthetic. Both she and Helena were unconscious a moment later.
Sandy signaled to the gunners, crouched at the side of the ship, to take them away and then nodded toward the climbing stick. “Come on then, if you have to,” he ordered Marguery.
As they climbed toward the hatch Bottom popped his head out of the door again, staring curiously but without suspicion at Sandy. Then he caught sight of Marguery coming up behind him. In Hakh’hli Bottom called, “Why are you bringing Earth-female aboard?”
“Tanya asked me same question,” Sandy replied, already at the door level. “Get out of my way, will you?” He pushed Bottom aside. When Marguery was safely inside, he said, “You can hear for yourself. Listen!” he commanded.
Demetrius appeared behind Bottom just as Boyle’s people, hiding under the landing craft, started the tape Boyle had provided. From outside came the recorded pleading, broken voice, sobbing in Hakh’hli, “Please! Please help me!” over and over.
“That’s Polly’s voice!” Demmy shouted, leaping toward the door. “Come on, Bottom, let’s see what’s wrong!”
Marguery leaned out the door. “They’re down,” she reported. “They got them both with the sleep darts. Well, Sandy, I guess we’ve done what we had to—”
“Get out of the way of the door,” he ordered.
“What? What do you mean?” She blinked at him. Then, as he toggled the hatch switch and the door slid shut, she jumped away. “Sandy, what the hell are you doing?”
“I’m strapping myself into this seat,” he said calmly. “You can take the one over there.”
“Why?”
“Because if you don’t,” he said logically, “you’ll get hurt when we take off.” He turned on the preheater, knowing that almost at once the first faint wisps of hot gas would begin to come out of the thrust jets. He moved uneasily in the pilot seat, hoping the crush wouldn’t be too bad in the acceleration when they took off. The seat had fit Polly perfectly. It was, of course, big enough for two or three like him.
It couldn’t be helped.
He touched the ignitor and opened the fuel throttle the smallest crack he could manage. He heard the hoarse white-noise hiss of the escaping flame, but the ship didn’t even shudder at that low setting. He didn’t expect it to. He only wanted to warn Boyle and the others that the main jets would be on in a moment, and hoped they would have the sense to get out of the way—and would drag the anesthetized Hakh’hli out of the way—before he applied power.
“Sandy! Turn that off!” Marguery shouted.
He said, “I told you to strap yourself in.”
“Stop it! Do you think I’m going to let you do this? I won’t permit it!”
He balanced the flat, heavy gun across his knee. It was pointing in her general direction, and his hand was on the trigger, the safety off.
“You can’t help it,” he pointed out.
She stared at him in horror. “Would you shoot me, then?” she gasped.
He said, “Not seriously. Only in your pretty, pretty leg, if I had to. Just to keep you from coming at me. But I’m not a very good shot, Marguery, and I might easily miss.”
Chapter 23
Although there are more than ninety thousand trackable objects in Low Earth Orbit, the space doesn’t look crowded. Low Earth Orbit, after all, includes a vast volume of space. It is a shell perhaps twenty miles thick, completely surrounding the Earth. The probability that any given orbiting object that is big enough to be detected—say, an expended nuclear pop-up laser—is within a mile of any other—say, an ascending Hakh’hli landing vessel—is very low at any given time. However, the orbital velocities are huge. The pop-up travels that mile in a quarter of a second. And the objects that are too small to be detected move just as fast . . . and there are many more of them . . . and hundreds of thousands of them are just as deadly.
Flying the Hakh’hli simulator was not at all like flying the landing vessel itself. Lysander’s inadequate piloting skills were taxed to the utmost. The only thing that saved them from disaster was that there was nothing very hard to do. Taking off was easier than landing. It was the easiest thing in the world: You didn’t have to go any place in particular, you only had to go up.
Compressed back into the huge kneeling-seat, Lysander could barely reach the Hakh’hli-designed controls. He knew what he had to do. It was just so very difficult to do it. Once they were off the ground he had to release his straps and lever himself forward against the enclosing arms of the seat—forcing every muscle to do more work than it had ever done before—in order to engage the magnetic repellers. Then he let himself drop back, panting.
Behind him Marguery gasped, “What are you doing, Sandy?”
“I am flying this Hakh’hli landing vessel,” he said proudly. “Please don’t get out of your seat.”
“As if I could!”
“Of course you cannot do that now,” he agreed, “but once we are at orbital velocity I will cut the thrust. Then you must remain where you are.”
“Or you’ll shoot me.”
“Oh, no, Marguery. It’s too late for you to keep me from taking off, isn’t it? But if you interfere you may very well crash and kill us both.”