“Let’s get along!” Wilcox shifted his weight and started limping back to where they had left the crawler.
And from then on they made no more side expeditions hunting wrecks. There were probably more of them to be found, Dane suspected. Mura’s idea had taken hold of his imagination-a Sargasso of space, drawing into its clutch wanderers of the lanes which came into the area of its baleful influence-whatever that influence could be. Why had the Queen been able to make a normal landing on a world where other ships crashed? Was it because they had had Rich and his men on board? Who and what was Rich?
They splashed through a stream which had been fed by the rain. It was there that Wilcox pulled up the crawler and spoke: “We must be getting close to a point opposite the Queen. If we don’t want to miss her we should get aloft-” He pointed to the cliffs.
In the end it was decided to make temporary camp with the crawler for their base, leaving Wilcox and two others there, while two more in turn climbed the heights and scouted ahead. It was now past noon and with the coming of night they would be able to move freely. So they must discover their vantage point before dark.
Rip and Mura made the first scout, but when Shannon came back to report-since they dared no longer trust to the com-calls which others might catch-it was to say that the Queen was in sight but farther ahead.
With caution Wilcox started up the crawler, taking it out of the valley they had just selected, through the rough edge of the plains, until he had gained a mile beyond their first proposed base. Concealed there behind a tall outcrop, he waited for a second report-and this time Mura made it.
“From there,” he indicated a pinnacle of rock, “one can see well. The Queen is sealed-and there are others around her. As yet we have not had a chance to count them or see their arms-”
Kosti, his fear of the heights still operating to keep him from climbing, had prowled along on the plain. Now he returned with news as much to the point as Mura’s.
“There is a place, right up there behind the lookout, where you can park the crawler and it can’t be seen from any angle-”
Wilcox headed the machine for that point and the jetman took the astrogator’s place to manoeuvre the crawler into the confined quarters. While Kosti and Wilcox stayed there, Dane climbed with Mura up to the spy post where Rip was already stationed, his back supported by a rock, far-distance glasses to his eyes as as he faced south, looking out over the burnt-off land.
There was the sky-pointing needle of the Queen. It was true she was sealed, the ramp was in, the hatch closed, she might have made ready for a blast-off. Dane unhooked his own glasses and adjusted the range until the rocky terrain about the ship’s fins leaped up at him.
CHAPTER TWELVE: SHIP BESIEGED
EVEN AFTER HE had the glasses focused he could not be sure that he saw more than just one strangely shaped vehicle and the two men by it. To Dane’s angle of sight the party appeared to be fully exposed to those in the Queen. And he wondered why the Traders had not attacked-if this was the enemy.
“Right out in the open-” he said aloud. But Rip was not so sure.
“I don’t think so. There’s a ridge there. Visibility’s poor now, but it would show in sunlight. With a stun rifle-”
Yes, with a stun rifle, and this elevation to aid him, a man might pick off those foreshortened figures-even with the range as great as it was. Unfortunately their full armament now consisted of only short range weapons-the close-to-innocuous sleep ray rods, and the blasters-potent enough, but only for in-fighting.
“Might as well wish for a bopper while you’re about it,” Dane commented.
Both flitters had disappeared from the landing place near the ship. He supposed they had been warped in for safety. Now he swept the ground slowly, trying to pick out any shape which did not seem natural. And within five minutes he was sure he had pinpointed at least as many posts of two or three watchers staked out in an irregular circle about the ship. Four of the groups had transportation-machines which resembled their own crawlers to some degree but were narrower and longer, as if they had been designed to negotiate the valleys of this planet.
“Speaking of boppers,” Rip’s voice startled Dane because of its tenseness, “What’s that? Over there-”
Dane’s glasses obediently turned west. “Where?”
”See that rock that looks a little like a hoobat’s head-to the left of that.”
Dane searched for a rock suggesting Captain Jellico’s pet monstrosity. He finally found it. To the left-now-yes! A straight barrel. Was that-could that be the barrel of a portable bopper, wheeled into a position which commanded the ship, from which it could drop its deadly little eggs right under her fins?
A bopper couldn’t begin to make any impression on a sealed ship, that was true. But it could and would bring sudden death to those venturing out into the gas which burst from its easily shattered ammunition. One had to take a bopper seriously.
“Space!” he spit out. “We must have strayed into a darcon’s nest-”
“With the clawed one breathing down our necks into the bargain,” agreed Rip. “Why doesn’t the Queen lift? They could sit down anywhere and pick us up later. Why stay here boxed in?”
“Do you not think?” asked Mura, “that perhaps the odd behaviour of our ship may have something to do with the wrecks? That maybe if the Queen takes to the air she might become as they are?”
“I’m no engineer,” Dane said, “but I don’t see how they could bring her down. They haven’t any big stuff lined up out there. It’d take a maul to push her off course-”
“Did you see any signs of an attack by a maul on the Rimbold? There were none. She crashed as if she were drawn to this planet by some force she could not resist. Those who wait down there may have the secret of such a force. It could be that they rule not only the surface of Limbo, but some portion of the heavens above-”
“You think that the installation is a part of it?” Rip inquired.
“Who knows?” the steward’s quiet voice continued.”It might well be.” He was watching the plain through his own glasses. “I would like to slip down there after nightfall and prowl about. If we could have a quiet and informative talk with one of those sentries-”
Mura’s tone did not change, he was his usual placid, un-excited self. But Dane knew that the last person he would care to change places with at that particular moment was one of the sentries Mura wished to “talk”.
“Hmmm-” Rip was studying the terrain. “It might be done at that. Or a man could get to the Queen and find out what this was all about-”
“You don’t think we could reach them by com?” suggested Dane. “We’re close enough for a clear reception.”
“Notice those helmets on the sentries’ heads?” Rip pointed out. “I’ll bet you earth-side pay that they’re linked up on our frequency now. If we talk they’ll listen-not only listen but get a fix on us. And they know this ground better than we do. Would you like to play hide and seek across this country in the dark?”
Dane decidedly would not. But it was difficult to relinquish using the coms. So easy to just call and find out what might take hours and hours of spying and risk to discover by themselves. Only, as the Masters had dinned into them for years back in the Pool, there were few easy short cuts in Trade. It was a matter of using your wits from first to last, of being able to improvise on the spur of the moment such dodges as would save your profit, your ship or your skin. And the last two precious articles appeared to be at stake on this occasion.
“At least,” Rip was continuing, “we are sure now that more than Rich and his hand-picked boys are involved.”
“Yes,” Mura nodded, “it would seem that the forces ranged against us are numerically stronger.” His glasses coursed from one group of hidden men to the next, until he had made the complete circle concealed from those aboard the Queen. “There are perhaps fifteen out there.”
“To say nothing of reinforcements they may have back in the mountains. But who in the Black Reaches of Outer Space are they?” Rip asked of the air about them.
“Something is about to happen,” Mura stiffened, his attention settling on one spot.
Dane followed the steward’s lead. The other was right. One of the besiegers had walked boldly out of cover and now approached the ship, waving vigorously over his head the age-old sign for parley-a strip of white cloth.