A shout from the farthest-ranging exploring party brought all those within earshot. Jammed at a crazy angle between outlying buildings, where none of the Horde had been stationed, was the mashed wreckage of a machine—looking as if some giant had caught it up and wrung it around as a man might a wet under-tunic.
“A crawler—that’s a crawler!” the awed voice of its discoverer repeated. And, while no one disputed him, they could hardly believe the evidence of their own eyes.
A crawler—not as large as a land fortress certainly, but in its way as formidable a piece of mechanized war machinery—to be so mangled and tossed here as if it were constructed of straw.
The outer hatch was open, forced straight up by the impact, and now Kosti climbed up the battered metal shell to look in. When he pulled out of the hole his face was greenish beneath its tan and he swallowed convulsively.
“She—she had a full crew on board—” he reported. Thereafter no one was in any hurry to join him at his vantage point.
“How many?” Hansu appeared below and started to climb.
Unwillingly Kosti peered into the wrecked crawler for the second time. His lips moved as he counted.
“—four—five—six. Six, sir.”
Hansu called down over his shoulder, “Larsen, Bogate, Vedic, lend a hand. We want them out.”
Reluctantly the men he had summoned scaled the mound of the tipped crawler as the Blademaster lowered himself into the machine. Even when they had the grisly job complete and the six bodies were laid out in the nearest shelter Hansu did not seem satisfied.
Five were Mechs and the Blademaster carefully studied their service armlets. But the sixth, though he wore the uniform of a veteran Mechmaster, was alien. And Hansu stood staring down at his crumpled form for a long minute after he arose from searching the torn and stained clothing.
“Sarm,” he said so low that if Kana had not been at his elbow he would not have caught the word at all. “Sarm!”
And his bald astonishment at that identification would have been the reaction of any Terran. Of all the Galactic races the Sarm from Sarmak would be the least likely to associate with the mercenaries they held in the deepest contempt as barbarians. They were not openly rude about it as were the Ageratans or the Dzaraneans, they merely ignored Combatants. Yet here was a Sarm, in a Mech uniform, perhaps in command of a Mech crawler—
“Sir—”
Hansu was shaken out of his trance by the urgent summons from Kosti now hanging half out of the plundered machine. “What—?”
“Cargo aboard her, sir. Looks like arms—”
The dead Sarmakan was left to himself as not only the Blademaster but every man within hearing hurried back to the side of the wreck. Larsen appeared in the hatch, handing through a box which Kosti lowered to the pavement. They clustered in a circle while Hansu squatted down to break the sealing with his sword-knife.
Inside, rolled in oiled fabric, was a series of bundles. And the Blademaster lost no time in freeing the first of its wrappings. As the last strip of stuff dropped away he held, plain to their recognition, a flamer of Galactic design.
“How many more boxes inside?” he asked Kosti in a flat voice.
“Three, sir.”
Hansu arose. There was a bleak look on his face. But a grim determination overrode other emotion.
“Any way of telling where this thing was when the storm hit?” he asked Kosti. “Do these operate on route tapes the way a ship does?”
“I don’t think so, sir. It has manual controls. But I can check—” He edged back into the crawler.
“Pretty far from Tharc, sir.” Larsen broke the quiet. “And a scout wouldn’t be hauling cargo—”
“Just so.” But Hansu had already turned to the Ventur who witnessed the whole scene curiously from the doorway of the warehouse. “You’re sure no spacer planeted near here?”
“None at the place we have used. Our mirrors of seeing would have told us—”
“And there is no other landing space within a day’s travel? This crawler was carrying cargo. It would not have been carrying arms away from Tharc—not in the windy season. But it might have been trying to reach there from a ship which planeted elsewhere.”
The Ventur’s nod agreed to the logic in that. “This is a heavy and well-built machine. Those within it, if they did not know the full fury of our winds, might believe themselves safe in its belly. It is true that so they might try to travel to Tharc. But it is equally true that those in Tharc—where the Llor know well the strength of the winds and would warn them—would not venture forth. Let me signal the Masters. It may well be that a ship has made a landing elsewhere.”
He vanished into the building. And a few moments later Kosti brought discouraging news from the machine.
“They were on manuals when they smashed up, sir. No tapes. But I don’t think she was scouting. The heavy guns were all still under wraps—two of them in storage cradles. She might just have come off a ship and they were driving her in.”
“Why not land at Tharc?” Hansu mused. He brought his balled fist down on the edge of the broken caterpillar tread by his shoulder. “I want every bit of her cargo, everything on the bodies of her crew, anything which may give us a clue, brought over to headquarters. And I want it done now!”
14 — THE HIDDEN SHIP
Though they found indications to prove that the crawler had been part of the cargo of a ship and recently landed to proceed under its own power—perhaps to Tharc—there was no clue as to where that ship had planeted. And in the end it was again the Venturi who were able to supply the missing piece of the puzzle.
The trader’s communication expert threaded his way through the group of veterans to Hansu. He wasted no time in getting to the point of the news he had received from his superiors.
“There is an off-world ship grounded six gormels to the south—”
Kana was attempting to translate “gormels” into good Terran miles and making heavy weather of it, when the Ventur continued:
“It is set among the rocks on the coast so it is safe from the winds.”
“How large a ship?” Hansu shot back.
The Ventur gave the odd movement of his upper pair of arms which was his species’ equivalent of a shrug. “We are not trained in recognizing the capacity of your ships, Lord. And if it had not been that near there we have a small post—” He hesitated before hurrying on, and Kana suspected that that post he mentioned was more a spy than a trader’s station. “But this ship is smaller than that which used to planet near here, and it landed secretly during the first storm lull—”
“Fifty miles—” Hansu proved quicker at translation. “The ground between us?”
Again the Ventur shrugged. “Most is waste land. And there will be more heavy blows.”
“But a small party could cross overland?” persisted the Blademaster. “Or would your people provide transportation by sea?”
The answer to the last question came first in a vigorous negative. Some trick of the currents offshore along that section of coast forbade landing except in the dead serenity of the calm season. As to crossing overland, the Ventur had no opinion, though he was courteous enough not to speak his truthful estimate of the state of mind of creatures attempting that feat now.
However he agreed to draw up a schedule of the storms and lulls which could be expected during the next three or four days. And Hansu had a second message relayed to the Masters at Po’ult.
The reply came that in the next lull the transports would put in, take on board the majority of the Horde, and leave a small party to make their way to the hidden space ship. It was a desperate plan, but not as desperate as the one they had faced earlier, the necessity for going to Tharc.
The Ventur liaison officer reported for a last check, comparing his set of maps with Hansu’s rudely drawn sketch of the coastline and pointing out where the ship must now be.
“The Masters send their wishes for your success,” he concluded. “Do you go tonight?”
“Not until the Horde has sailed,” Hansu replied absently. His gaze roved over the men assembled in the room. Not all the Combatants could crowd in to hear this final decision—there were the sick and wounded. But who out of that company were going on the venture south? Kana knew that that was at the fore of every mind there.
He did his own secret choosing. Kosti, the small, lean man, had to go. Alone of the Horde he had knowledge of mechanics—had the know-how to take a ship—if they were lucky enough to steal it—into space. And Hansu—Kana was certain that the Blademaster intended being one of the party. But how many—and who?