Star Soldiers (30 page)

"I trust not," Zinga raised both his first and second eyelids to their fullest extent. "I long to pit my wits—daring adventurer style—against some fiendish, intelligent monster—"

Kartr grinned. For some reason he had always found the reptile-ancestored brain of the Zacathan more closely akin to his own thinking processes than he ever did Fylh's cool detachment. Zinga entered into life with zest, while the Trystian was, in spite of physical participation, always the onlooker.

"Maybe we can locate some settlement of your fiendish monsters among those hills," he suggested. "What about it, Fylh, dare we try to reach them?"

"No." Fylh was measuring with a claw tip the gage on the control panel. "We've enough to get us back to the ship from here and that is all."

"If we all hold our breath and push," murmured the Zacathan. "All right. And if we have to set down, we'll walk. There is nothing better than to feel good hot sand ooze up between one's toes—" He sighed languorously.

The sled arose, startling the brown-coated fisherman. It sat on its haunches, one dripping paw raised, to watch them go. Kartr caught its mild astonishment—but it had no fear of them. It had few enemies and did not expect those to fly through the air. As they swung around Kartr tried an experiment and sent a darting flash of good will into that primitive brain. He looked back. The animal had risen to its hind legs and stood, man fashion, its front paws dangling loosely, staring after the sled.

They passed over the falls so low that the spray beaded their skins. Kartr caught his lower lip between his teeth and bit down on it. Was that only Fylh's flying or did power failure drive them down? He had no desire to ask that question openly.

"To follow the river back," Zinga pointed out, "is to take the long way round. If we cut across country from that peak we ought to hit the ship—"

Kartr saw and nodded. "How about it, Fylh? Stick to the water or not?"

The Trystian hunched his shoulders in his equivalent of a shrug. "Quicker, yes." And he pointed the sled's bow to the right.

They left the stream thread. A carpet of trees lay beneath them and then a scrubby clearing in which a group of five red-brown animals grazed. One tossed its head skyward and Kartr saw the sun glint on long cruel horns.

"I wonder," mused Zinga, "if they ever do any disputing with our river-bank friend. He had some pretty formidable claws—and those horns are not just for adornment. Or maybe they have some kind of treaty of nonaggression—"

"Then," observed Fylh, "they would be locked in deadly combat most of the time!"

"You know"—Zinga stared at the back of Fylh's crested head fondly—"you're a very useful Bemmy, my friend. With you along we never have to wear ourselves out expecting the worst—you have it all figured out for us. What would we ever do without your dark, dark eyes fixed upon the future?"

The trees and shrubs below were growing fewer. Rock and sections of baked, creviced earth and the queer, twisted plants which seemed native to the desert appeared in larger and larger patches.

"Wait!" Kartr's hand shot out to touch Fylh's arm. "To the right—there!"

The sled obediently swooped and came down on a patch of level earth. Kartr scrambled out, brushed through the fringe of stunted bush to come out upon the edge of what he had sighted from the air. The other two joined him.

Zinga dropped upon one knee and touched the white section almost gingerly. "Not natural," he gave his verdict.

Sand and earth had drifted and buried it. Only here had some freak of the scouring wind cleared that patch to betray it. Pavement—an artificial pavement!

Zinga went to the right, Fylh left, for perhaps forty feet. They squatted and, using their belt knives, dug into the soil. Within seconds each had uncovered a hard surface.

"A road!" Kartr kicked more sand away. "Surface transportation here at one time then. How long ago do you guess?"

Fylh shifted the loosened soil through his claws. "Here is heat and dryness, and, I think, not too many storms. Also the vegetation does spread as it would in jungle country. It may be ten years—ten hundred or—"

"Ten thousand!" Kartr ended for him. But the spark of excitement within him was being fanned into more vigorous life. So there
had
been superior life here! Man—or something—had built a road on which to travel. And roads usually led to—

The sergeant turned to Fylh. "Do you think we could pry enough fuel out of the main drive to bring the sled back here with the tailer mounted?"

Fylh considered. "We might—if we didn't need fuel for anything else."

Kartr's excitement faded. They would need it for other work. The Commander and Mirion would have to be transported on it when they left the ship—supplies carried—all that they would require to set up a camp in the more hospitable hill country. He kicked regretfully at the patch of pavement. Once it would have been his duty as well as his pleasure to follow that thin clue to its source. Now it was his duty to forget it. He walked heavily back to the sled and none of them spoke as they were again airborne.

They circled the crumpled length of the
Starfire
and saw a figure waving from a point near her nose. When they landed the sled Jaksan was waiting.

"Well?" he demanded harshly, almost before the sand had fallen away from the keel of the sled.

"There's good, open, well-watered land to the north," Kartr reported. "Animal life in a wilderness—"

"Eatable water creatures!" Zinga broke in, licking his lips at the memory.

"Any indications of civilization?"

"An old road, buried—nothing else. The animals know no superior life form. We had the recorder on—I can run the wire through for the Commander—"

"If he wants it—"

"What do you mean!" The tone in Jaksan's voice brought Kartr up short, the reel of spy wire clutched in his good hand.

"Commander Vibor," Jaksan's answer came cold and hard, "believes it our duty to remain with the ship—"

"But why?" asked the sergeant in honest bewilderment.

Nothing was ever going to raise the
Starfire
again. It was folly not to realize that at once and make plans on that basis. Kartr did now what he seldom dared to attempt, tried to read the surface mind of the arms officer. There was worry there, worry and something else—a surprising, puzzling resentment when Jaksan thought of him, Kartr, or of any of the rangers. Why? Did it stem back to the fact that the ranger sergeant was not a child of the Service, had not been reared of a Patrol family in the tight grip of tradition and duty, as had the other human members of the crew? Was it because he was termed a Bemmy lover and alien? He accepted that resentment as a fact, pigeonholed the memory of it to recall when he had to work with Jaksan in the future.

"Why?" The arms officer repeated Kartr's question. "A commander has responsibilities—even a ranger should realize that. Responsibilities—"

"Which doom him to starve to death in a broken ship?" cut in Zinga. "Come now, Jaksan. Commander Vibor is an intelligent life form—"

Kartr's fingers moved in the old warning signal. The Zacathan caught it and fell silent while the sergeant cut in quickly on the heels of the other's last word.

"He will undoubtedly wish to see the record tape before making any plans anyway."

"The Commander is blind!"

Kartr stopped short. "You are sure?"

"Smitt is. Tork might have been able to help him. We don't have the skill—the wounds go beyond the help of the medic-first-aid."

"Well, I'll report." Kartr started toward the ship, feeling as if he carried several pounds of lead in the sole of each boot and some vast and undefinable burden had settled down upon his shoulders.

Why, he asked himself dispiritedly as he climbed through the lock of the port, did he have this depression? Certainly leadership now in no way fell upon him. Both Jaksan and Smitt outranked a sergeant—as a warrant officer of rangers he was just barely within the borderline of the Service as it was. But even knowing that did nothing to free him from this unease.

"Kartr reporting, sir!" He came to attention before the masked man propped up against two bedrolls in the lounge.

"Your report—" The request was mechanical. Kartr began to wonder if the other really heard him, or, hearing, understood a word he said.

"We have crashed near the edge of a desert. By sled the scouting party traveled north along a river to a well-watered, forested tract. Because of the limited supply of fuel our cruising range was curtailed. But there is a section to the north which looks promising as a base for a camp—"

"Life indications?"

"Many animals of different types and breeds—on a low scale of intelligence. Only trace of civilization is a portion of roadway so covered as to argue long disuse. Animals have no memory of contact with superior life forms."

"Dismissed."

But Kartr did not go. "Pardon, sir, but have I your permission to break out what is left of the main drive energy supply to use when we arrange for transportation—"

"The ship's supply? Are you completely mad? Certainly not! Report to Jaksan for repair party duty—"

Repair party? Did Vibor honestly believe that there was the slightest chance of repairing the
Starfire
? Surely— The ranger hesitated at the door of the lounge and half turned to go back. But, guessing the uselessness of any further appeal made to Vibor, he went on to the rangers' quarters where he found the others gathered. A smaller figure just within the doorway turned out to be Smitt, who got up to face Kartr as he came in.

"Any luck, Kartr?"

"He told me to report for repair party duty. Great Winds of Space, what does he mean?"

"You may not believe it," answered the com-techneer, "but he means just what he says. We are supposed to be repairing this hulk for a take-off—"

"But can't he see—?" began Kartr and then bit his lip, remembering. That was just it—the Commander could not see the present condition of the wrecked ship. But that was no excuse for Jaksan or Smitt not making it plain to him—

As if he was able to pick that thought out of the air the com-techneer answered:

"He won't listen to us. I was ordered to my quarters when I tried to tell him. And Jaksan's only agreed with every order he's issued!"

"But why would he do that? Jaksan's no fool, he knows that we aren't going to lift again. The
Starfire's
done for."

Smitt leaned back against the wall. He was a small man, thin and tough and almost black with space tan. And now he appeared to share a portion of Fylh's almost malicious detachment. The only things he had ever really loved were his communicators. Kartr had seen him once furtively stroking the smooth plastic of their sides with a loving hand. Because of the old division of the ship's personnel—Patrol crew and rangers—Kartr did not know him very well.

"You can easily accept the idea that we're through," the com-techneer was saying now. "You've never been tied to this hunk of metal the way we are. Your duty is on planets—not in space. The
Starfire
is a part of Vibor—he can't just walk into the wide blue now and forget all about her— Neither can Jaksan."

"All right. I can believe that the ship might mean more to you, her regular crew, than she does to us," agreed Kartr almost wearily. "But she's a dead ship now and nothing any of us or all of us can do will make her ready to lift again. We'd best leave her—try to establish a base somewhere near food and water—"

"Cut clean from the past and begin again? Maybe. I can agree with you—intellectually. Only in suggesting that you'll come up against emotions, too, my young friends. And you'll find that another matter altogether!"

"And why," asked Kartr slowly, "is it up to
me
to deal with anything?"

"Process of elimination elects you. If we're grounded past hope of escape, who is the best able to understand our problems—someone who has spent his life in space almost since childhood—or a ranger? What
are
you going to do?"

But Kartr refused to answer that. The longer Smitt needled him in that fashion the more uneasy he became. He had never been treated with such frankness by a crew officer.

"The Commander will decide," he began.

Then Smitt laughed, a short harsh sound which lacked any thread of mirth. "So you're afraid to face up to it, fly-boy? I thought you rangers could never be rattled—that the fearless, untamed explorers would—"

Kartr's good hand closed on the tunic folds just below Smitt's throat.

"What kind of trouble are you trying to start, Smitt?" he asked, omitting the respect due an officer.

But the com-techneer made no move to strike away the sergeant's hand or twist free from the hold. Instead his eyes lifted to meet Kartr's steadily, soberly. Kartr's fingers loosened and his hand dropped. Smitt believed in what he was trying to say, believed in it very much even though he had been jeering. Smitt had come to him for help. Now for the first time Kartr was glad he possessed that strange gift of his—to sense the emotions of his fellows.

"Let's have it," he said and sat down on a bedroll. He was aware that the tension which had held them all for a second or two was relaxing. And he knew that the rangers would follow his lead—they would wait for his decision.

"Vibor is no longer with us—he's—he's cracked." Smitt fumbled for words. And Kartr read in him a rising fear and desolation.

"Is it because of his loss of sight? If that is so, the condition may be only temporary. When he becomes resigned to that—"

"No. He has been heading for a breakdown for a long time. The responsibility of command under present conditions—that fight with the Greenies—he was good friends with Tork, remember? The ship falling to pieces bit by bit and no chance for repairs— It's added up to drive him under. Now he's just refusing to accept a present he doesn't dare believe in. He's retired into a world of his own where things go right instead of wrong. And he wants us in there with him."

Kartr nodded. There was the ring of truth in every word Smitt said. Of course, he himself had never had much personal contact with Vibor. The rangers were not admitted to the inner circle of the Patrol—they were only tolerated. He was not a graduate of a sector academy, or even a product of the ranks. His father had not been Patrol before him. So he had always been aloof from the crew. The discipline of the Service, always strict, had been tightening more and more into a rigid caste system, even during the few years he had worn the Comet—perhaps because the Service itself had been cut off from the regular life of the average citizens. But Kartr could at this moment understand the odd incidents of the past months, certain inconsistencies in Vibor's orders—one or two remarks he had overheard.