Kosti laid his hands on the prisoner’s shoulders and forced him to sit down on a rock. “We know,” he repeated in a mock soothing tone. “Sure-there’s a great big machine here with a Forerunner running it. It reaches out and grabs-just like this!” He clutched with his own big fist at the empty air an inch or two beyond Snall’s nose.
But the prisoner had recovered a little of his poise. “You don’t have to believe me,” he returned. “Just watch and see what happens if that pigheaded captain of yours tries to upship here. It won’t be pretty. And it won’t be long before you’re gathered up, either-”
“I suppose you have ways of running us down?” Wilcox’s left eyebrow slanted up under his helmet. “Well, you haven’t contacted us yet and we’ve done quite a bit of travelling lately.”
Snall looked from one to the another. There was a faint puzzlement in his attitude.
“You’re wearing Trade dress,” he repeated aloud the evidence gathered by his eyes. “You have to be from the Queen.”
“But you’re not quite sure, are you?” prodded Mura. “We may be from some other spacer you trapped with this Forerunner device. Are you certain that there are no other survivors of crashes roaming through these valleys?”
“If there are-they won’t be walking about long!” was Snall’s quick retort.
“No. You have your own way of dealing with them, don’t you? With this?” Wilcox lifted the blaster so that it now centred upon the prisoner’s head rather than his middle. “Just as you handled some of those aboard the Rimbold.”
“I wasn’t in on that!” Snall gabbled. In spite of the morning chill there were drops of moisture ringing his hairline.
“It seems to me that you are all outlaws,” Wilcox continued, still in a polite, conversational tone. “Are you sure you haven’t been Patrol Posted?”
That did it. Snall jumped. He got about a foot away before Kosti dragged him back.
“All right-so I’ve been posted!” he snarled at Wilcox as the jetman smacked him down on the rock once more. “What are you going to do about it? Burn me when I’m unarmed? Go ahead-do it!”
Traders could be ruthless if the time and place demanded ice-cold tactics, but Dane knew now that the last thing Wilcox would do was to burn Snall down in cold blood. Even if the fact that he was Patrol Posted as a murderous criminal, with a price on his head, put him outside the law and absolved his killer from any future legal complications.
“Why should we kill you?” asked Mura calmly. “We are Free Traders. I think that you know very well what that means. A swift death by a blaster is a very easy way into the Greater Space, is it not? But out on the Rim, in the Wild Worlds, we have learned other tricks. So you do not believe that, Lav Snall?”
The steward had made no threatening grimaces, his pleasant face was as blandly cheerful as ever. But Snall’s eyes jerked away from that face. He swallowed in a quick gulp.
“You wouldn’t-” he began again, but there was no certainty in his protest. He must have realized that the competition he now faced was far more dangerous than he had estimated. There were tales about Free Traders, they were reputed to be as tough as the Patrol, and not nearly so bound by regulation. He believed that Mura meant exactly what he said.
“What do you want to know-”
“The truth,” returned Wilcox.
“I’ve been giving it to you-straight,” Snall protested. “We’ve found a Forerunner installation back in the mountains. It acts on ships-pulls them right out of space to crack up here after they move into the beam, or ray, or whatever it is. I don’t know how it works. Nobody’s even seen the thing except a few picked men who know something about com stuff-”
“Why didn’t it act on the Solar Queen when she came in?” Kosti asked. “She landed perfectly.”
“’Cause the thing wasn’t turned on. You had Salzar on board, didn’t you?”
“And who is Salzar?” it was Mura’s turn to ask the question.
“Salzar-Gart Salzar. He was the first to see what a sweet thing we found here. He got us all under cover when Survey was snooping around. We lay low and Salzar knew that if this world was auctioned off we’d be in real trouble. He took a cruiser we’d patched up and beat the Griswold back to Naxos, and then contacted you. So we get a nice trader all empty and waiting to load our stuff-”
“Your loot? And how did you reach here-crash?”
“Salzar did ten-twelve years ago. He didn’t make too bad a landing and he and those men of his who were still alive went snooping. They found the Forerunnner’s machine and studied it until they learned a bit about working it. Now they can switch it off when they want to. It was dead when Survey was prowling around here because Salzar was off planet and we were afraid we’d get him when he came in.”
“A pity you didn’t,” Wilcox remarked. “And where is this machine?”
Snall shook his head. “I don’t know.” Kosti moved a step closer and Snall added swiftly, “That’s the truth! Only Salzar’s boys know where it is or how it works.”
“How many of them?” Kosti asked.
“Salzar, and three, maybe four others. It’s back in the mountains-there somewhere-” he stabbed a finger, a shaking finger in the general direction of the range.
“I think you can do better than that,” Kosti was beginning when Dane cut in:
“What was Snall doing driving that crawler in here-if he didn’t know where he was going?”
Mura’s eyelids dropped as he adjusted the buckle of his helmet. “I think we have been slightly remiss. We should have a sentry aloft. There may be one of Snall’s friends along.”
Snall studiously studied the toes of his boots. Dane went to the cliff.
“I’ll take a look-see,” he offered.
To his first sight the situation on the plain had not changed. The Queen, all hatches sealed, rested just as she had at twilight the night before. With his glasses he could make out the small encampments of outlaws. But close to his own post he saw something else.
One of the strange crawlers had pulled away from the nearest camp. Seated behind the driver were two others and between them a fourth passenger, his brown Trade tunic not to be mistaken.
“Rip!” though Dane could not see that prisoner’s face he was sure the captive was Shannon. And the crawler was headed towards the valley where the bogies had ambushed the first!
Now was their chance to not only rescue Rip but make a bigger gap in the besiegers’ force. Dane crawled to the edge of the cliff and, not daring to call, waved vigorously to attract the attention of those below. Mura and Wilcox nodded and Kosti headed the prisoner into greater seclusion. Then Dane sought a vantage point and waited with rising excitement for the enemy crawler to enter the valley.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: TRUMPET OF JERICHO
“IT IS TIME, I believe,” Mura had come up on the lookout point, “to follow the tactics of our fellow fighters, these ‘bogies’. How is your throwing arm, Thorson?” He stooped and searched the ground, rising a few moments later grasping a round stone about as big as his fist.
Taking aim he pitched it at an angle into the valley and they saw and heard it strike against a rock there. Dane saw the reason for such an attack upon the crawler. Blaster fire was no respecter of persons. In an exchange of such potent forces Rip might well be killed or maimed. But rocks expertly thrown from above would not only knock out the outlaws but would suggest an attack by native Limbians and not betray the identity of the attackers.
Kosti circled around the foot of the cliff and took cover below the perch favoured by Mura, while Dane skimmed across the valley and climbed above eye level to a narrow ledge on which he might crouch with a pile of hastily collected ammunition.
They were not given long for such preparations, the clinking passage of the crawler echoed ahead as a warning and the three Traders took to cover as the vehicle crept into sight across the uneven terrain. It crashed through bushes until the driver slowed to a halt. His helmet com-unit must have been on, for, while his natural voice could only have been an undistinguishable murmur to those in hiding, his words were loud in their ears.
“There’s Snall’s wagon-piled up! What’s been-”
One of Rip’s guards scrambled off the crawler as if to go forward and investigate. And in that moment Mura’s arm signalled Dane to attack.
A stone thudded against the helmet of the would-be investigator, sending him off balance to clutch at the tread of the crawler for support. Dane slammed another in his direction and then aimed for the driver of the machine.