The benefits of Central Control civilization, yes. Kartr blinked as that struck home. His own planet, Ylene, had been burnt off five years ago—during the Two-Sector Rebellion. And yet he sometimes still dreamed of taking the mail packet back, of wearing his ranger uniform, proud with the Five Sector Bars and the Far Roving Star, of going up into the forest country—to a little village by the north sea. Burnt off—! He had never been able to visualize boiled rock where that village had stood—or the dead cinder which was the present Ylene—a horrible monument to planetary war.
Zinga worked on his wrist and put it in a sling. Kartr was able to help himself as they angled Mirion through the door. By the time they had the pilot resting in the lounge the Patrolman, Smitt, came in, towing a figure so masked in head bandages as to be unrecognizable.
“Commander Vibor?” Kartr hazarded. He was on his feet, his shoulders squared, his heels brought smartly together so that the vlis hide of his boots rasped faintly.
The bandaged head swung toward him.
“Ranger Kartr?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Who else—?” The voice began with customary briskness but then it trailed off into a disconcerting silence.
Kartr frowned. The vlis skin gave off another whisper as he shifted his feet.
“Of the Patrol—Latimir is dead, sir. We have Mirion here—hurt. And Smitt is okay. The Rangers Fylh, Rolth, Zinga, and myself are all right. Rolth reports that the drive room hatch is jammed and that no one replied when he pounded on it. We will investigate that now, sir. Also the crew’s quarters.”
“Yes—yes— Carry on, Ranger.”
Smitt jumped just in time to catch and ease that lank, limp body to the floor. Commander Vibor was in no shape to resume command.
Kartr knew again a touch of that panic which had gripped him when the lights had failed. Commander Vibor—the man they had come to believe was a rock of certainty and security in their chaotic world— He sucked in the tainted air of the too old ship and accepted the situation.
“Smitt.” He turned first to the Patrol com-techneer, who by all the rigid rules of the service certainly outranked a mere ranger sergeant. “Can you take over with the Commander and Mirion?”
Smitt did have some medico training, he had acted as Tork’s assistant once or twice.
“Right.” The shorter man did not even look up as he bent over the moaning pilot. “Go along and check the rest of the wreckage, fly-boy—”
Fly-boy, eh? Well, the high and mighty senior service of the Patrol should be glad that the fly-boys were with them during this tour of duty. Rangers were trained to calculate and use the products of any strange world. After a crack up they would certainly be more at home in an alien wilderness than Patrol-crewmen.
Holding his injured arm tightly to his chest Kartr made his way back along the corridor, followed by the begoggled Rolth, his eyes shaded against what was to him the violent fire cast by the ordinary beam torch the sergeant clutched in his good hand. Zinga and Fylh brought up the rear, having armed themselves, as Kartr noted, with a portable flamer to cut through jammed bulkheads.
Even with that it took them a good ten minutes to break the hatch of the drive room. And in spite of the clamor they made during the process there came no answer from within. Kartr steeled himself inwardly and pushed through first. He looked only once at what was caught in the full shaft of his beam and then backed out, sick and shaking. The others, seeing his face, asked no questions.
As he leaned against the edge of the battered door fighting nausea they all heard the pounding from the tail section.
“Who—?”
Fylh answered. “Armory and supplies—that would be Jaksan, Cott, Snyn, Dalgre.” He counted them off on the tips of his claw-boned fingers. “They must be—”
“Yes.” Kartr was already leading the rescue party toward the sound.
Again they had to apply the white-hot energy of the flamer to buckled metal. And then they must wait until they metal had cooled before three battered and blood-streaked men came crawling through.
Jaksan—yes, Kartr would have wagered a year’s pay credits that the tough, very tough, Patrol arms officer would survive. And Snyn and Dalgre.
Jaksan began to speak even before he got to his feet again.
“How is it?”
“Smitt’s okay. The Commander has some head injuries. Mirion’s bad. The rest—” Kartr’s hands swept out in a gesture from his childhood—one of those strange barbarian exuberances he had been so careful to suppress during his service years.
“The ship—”
“I’m a ranger, no Patrol techneer. Maybe Smitt could tell you better about that. He’s the nearest to an expert that we have left.”
Jaksan’s fingernails rasped in the stubble on his unshaven chin. There was a long rip in his right sleeve, an oozing scratch under it. He stared at the three rangers absently. Already he was probably cutting losses. If the Starfire could function again it would be because of his drive and determination.
“The planet?”
“Arth type. Mirion was trying to set down in what looked like open country when the tubes blew. No traces of civilization noted before landing.” This information was Kartr’s own territory and he answered with confidence.
If the rangers’ sleds hadn’t been too badly banged up they could break one out soon and begin exploring. There was, of course, the fuel problem. There might be enough in sled tanks for one trip—with a very even chance that the scouting party would walk home. Unless the Starfire was definitely done for and they could tap her supply— But that could all be gone into later. At least they could take a look now at their immediate surroundings.
“We’ll sortie.” Kartr’s voice was crisp and assured and asked no permission from Jaksan—or any crewman. “Smitt is with the Commander and Mirion in the lounge—”
The Patrol officer nodded. This return to routine was correct, right. It seemed to steady them all, Kartr observed, as he found his way into the ranger’s own domain. Fylh was there before him, freeing their packs from the general jumble the crash had made of their supplies. Kartr shook his head.
“Not full packs. We won’t go more than a quarter mile. And, Rolth,” he added over his shoulder to the begoggled Faltharian in the doorway, “you stay here. Arth sun is bad for your eyes. Your turn will come after nightfall.”
Rolth nodded and went toward the lounge. Kartr picked up an explorer’s belt with one hand but Zinga took it from him.
“This I do. Stand still.” The other’s scaled digits buckled and snapped the vlis hide band and its dangling accouterments about the sergeant’s flat waist. He gave a wriggle to settle the weight in the familiar balance. No need to pick up a disrupter—he couldn’t fire it with one hand. The short blaster would have to serve as his sole weapon.
Luckily they had not landed air-lock side down. To burn and burrow their way out was a job none of them would have cared for just then. But they only had to hammer loose the hatch and climb through, Kartr being boosted by his companions. Then they slid down the dull and scored metal to the still smoking ground, ran across that to the clean earth beyond the range of the blast. Once there they halted and wheeled to look back at the ship.
“Bad—” Fylh’s chirp put all their dismay into words. “She will not lift from here again.”
Well, Kartr was no mech-techneer, but he would endorse that. The wrenched and broken-backed ship before them would certainly never ride the space lanes again, even if they could get her to a refitting dock. And the nearest of those was, Space knew, how many suns away!
“Why should we worry about that?” asked Zinga mildly. “Since we first set out on this voyage we guessed that there would be for us no return—”
Yes, they had feared that, deep in their hearts, in the backs of their minds, with that flutter of terror and loneliness which plucked at a man’s nerves as he rode between system and stars. But none of them had before admitted it openly to another. None—unless—
Maybe the humans had not admitted it, but the Bemmys might have. Loneliness had long since become a part of their lives—they were so often the only individuals of their respective species aboard a ship. If Kartr felt alien in Patrol crews because he was not only a specialized ranger but also a barbarian from a frontier system, what must Fylh or Zinga feel—they who could not even claim the kinship of a common species?
Kartr turned away from the broken ship to study the sandy waste studded with rock outcrops. It must be close to midday and the sun beat down heavily upon them. Under this wave of heat Zinga thrived. His frill spread wide—making a fan behind his hairless head, pulsing a darker red with every passing moment, his slender tongue flickered in and out between his yellow lips. But Fylh moved to the protection of the shadow by the rocks.