Star Soldiers (33 page)

Across the horizon from left to right swept a yellow-white beam, reaching from some point on the earth ahead far into the heavens. It took three seconds for it to complete the full sweep. Kartr counted. Sixty seconds later it leaped into sight once more, moving in the same course. A beacon!

"How long—?"

"I saw it first an hour ago. It is very regular."

"It must be a beacon, a marker—but for whom—run by whom—?"

"Must it be run by anyone?" asked Rolth thoughtfully. "Remember Tantor—"

Tantor, the sealed city. Its inhabitants had been overwhelmed by a ghastly plague two centuries ago. Yes, he recalled Tantor well. Once he had flown above the vast bubble which enclosed it in an eternal prison for the safety of the galaxy, and had watched the ancient machines going about their business below, running a city in which no living thing walked or ever would walk again. Tantor had had its beacons too, and its appeals for help streaming into the skies mechanically long after the hands which had set them going had been dust. Behind those hills ahead might well rest another Tantor—it would explain the puzzle of a fair but deserted world.

"Ask Jaksan to come," Kartr said at last. "But do not arouse the others."

Rolth disappeared and the sergeant stood alone, watching the light sweep across the sky in its timed sequence. Was the machine which cast that tended or untended? Was that some signal for help, a help long since unneeded? Was it a guide set for a ship from the stars which had never arrived?

He heard the roll of loose gravel started by an impatient foot. The arms officer was on his way.

"What is it?" Jaksan demanded impatiently a moment later.

Kartr did not turn around. "Look due north," he ordered. "See that!"

The beam made the arc across the horizon. Kartr heard a gasp which was almost a cry.

"It must be a signal of some sort," the sergeant continued. "And I would judge mechanically broadcast—"

"From a city!" Jaksan added eagerly.

"Or a landing port. But—remember Tantor?"

The other's silence was his answer.

"What do you propose to do?" Jaksan asked after a long moment.

"This process you were discussing with Dalgre—can you use disruptor charges in the sled? We must keep the extra fuel for emergencies."

"We can try to do it. It was done once and Dalgre read the report. Suppose we can—what then?"

"I'll take the sled and investigate that."

"Alone?"

Kartr shrugged. "With not more than one other. If that is a dead monument, another Tantor, we dare not be too precipitant in exploration. And the fewer to risk their necks the better."

The arms officer chewed on that. Again the touch of resentment he could not altogether keep under reached Kartr. He guessed what the other must be feeling now. That signal ahead might mean at the very best a star port, a chance to find another still navigable ship, to return to the safe familiar life the Patrol officer had always known. At the very least it promised remains of a civilization of sorts, if only a pile of ruins which could be used to shelter men against the raw life of a wilderness world.

It was up to the rangers to be patient with such men as Jaksan. What to them was a promise of a free and proper way of life was to these unwilling companions of theirs a slipping back into utter darkness. If Jaksan would give way entirely to his emotions now he would rush madly for the sled, and ride it toward the beacon. But he kept that desire under stiff curb, he was no Snyn.

"We go to work on the sled at dawn," the arms officer promised. As Kartr started down the hill, he did not move to follow, "I shall stay here a little while longer."

Well, Rolth was making the rounds as night guard. He would see that Jaksan came to no harm. Kartr went back to the fire alone. Crawling into his bedroll he closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep. But in his dreams a thrust of yellow-white light both threatened and beckoned.

Jaksan was as good as his word. The next morning Dalgre, Snyn and the arms officer dismantled the largest of the disruptors and gingerly worked loose its power unit. Because they were handling sudden and violent death they worked slowly, testing each relay and installation over and over again. It took a full day of painful work on the sled before they were through, and even then they could not be sure it would really rise.

Just before sunset Fylh took the pilot's seat, getting in as if he didn't altogether care for his place just over those tinkered-with power units. But he had insisted upon playing test pilot.

The sled went up with a lurch, too strong a surge. Then it straightened out neatly, as Fylh learned how to make adjustments, and sped across the river, to circle and return, alighting with unusual care considering who had the controls. Fylh spoke to Jaksan before he was off his seat.

"She has a lot more power than she had before. How long is it going to last?"

Jaksan rubbed a grimy hand across his forehead. "We have no way of telling. What did that report say, Dalgre?"

"That kind of hook-up brought a cruiser in three light years to base. Then they dug it out. They never learned how long it might have lasted."

Fylh nodded and turned to Kartr.

"Well, she's ready and waiting. When do we take off, sergeant?"

In the end the rangers drew lots for the pilot's place and the choice fell, not to Fylh, but to Rolth. Secretly Kartr was pleased. To fly with Rolth at the controls would mean going by night—but that would be the wiser thing to do when covering a strange city. And, after all, Rolth had been the one to discover the beacon.

They set off at dusk, rations and bedrolls strapped under the single seat remaining in the stripped-down sled. And with the bedrolls was the single disruptor they had left. Jaksan had insisted upon their taking that.

Rolth sang softly as they sped through the chill of the dusk—one of the minor wailing airs of his own twilight world. Without his protective goggles his dark eyes were alive in his pallid face.

Kartr leaned back against the seat pad and watched the ground darken from green to dusky blue. Just on chance he triggered the tailer. Now if they did pass above any large man-made object they would be warned.

There was life abroad in the hills below—animal hunters on the prowl. And once a wild screech reached them. Kartr read in that sound the rage and the disgust of a hunter that had missed its spring and must stalk again. But no man walked below them—nothing even close to human.

The tailer clicked. Kartr leaned forward and consulted the dial. One point only. And a small one. But—man-made. A single building perhaps—maybe long buried. Not the site of the beacon.

Even as he thought of it the beam swept across the dusk-darkened sky. No, whatever lay below had no connection with that.

There were hills and more hills. Rolth applied power which raised them over, sometimes hardly skimming above rocks which crowned the peaks. Then they began to drop away again, making steps for a giant down into another low land.

And now they could see what lay in the heart of that. A blaze of light, not all yellow-white, but emerald, ruby, sapphire too! A handful of gigantic gems spilled out to pulse and glow in the night.

Kartr had visited the elfin ruins of lost Calinn—needle towers and iridescent domes—a city no man living in the days of human civilization could duplicate. He had seen sealed Tantor, and the famous City of the Sea, built of stone-encased living organisms beneath the waters of Parth. But this—it was strangely familiar as well as alien. He was drawn and repelled by it at the same time.

He put a hand to the controls to give Rolth a chance to resume his goggles. What was bright light for the sergeant was blinding to the Faltharian.

"Do we just fly in—or scout first?" asked Rolth.

Kartr frowned, sending his perceptive sense ahead—a surgeon's delicate probe, prying into the source of the lights.

He touched what he sought, touched and recoiled in the same instant, fleeing the awareness of the mind he had contacted. But what he had found was so astounding that he was too startled to answer that question at once. When he did it was decisively.

"We scout—!"

Rolth cut down the speed of the sled. He swung it out in an arc to encircle the splotch of light.

"I wouldn't have believed it!" Kartr gave voice at last to his bewilderment.

"There are inhabitants?"

"One at least—I contacted an Ageratan mind!"

"Pirates?" suggested Rolth.

"In an open city—with all that light to betray them? Though, you may be right at that, that is just where they might feel safe. But be careful, we don't want to walk straight into a blast beam. And that kind fire before they ask your name and planet—especially if they see our Comets!"

"Did he catch your mind touch?"

"Who knows what an Ageratan gets or doesn't get? No one has been able to examine them unless they are either completely unaware or deliberately open. He could have been either then."

"More than one?"

"I got out—fast—when I tapped him. Didn't stay to see."

The tailer was clicking madly. Kartr should have switched on the recorder, too. But without a machine to read the wire that was useless. From now on scouting reports would be oral. The sled glided slowly over a section where the buildings stood some distance apart, vegetation thick between them.

"Look—" Rolth pointed to the left. "That's a landing stage there—if I ever saw one. How about setting down on the next one and going ahead on foot—"

"Get in closer to the main part of the city first. No use in walking several miles after we go down."

They found what they wanted, a small landing stage on the top of a tower, a tower which seemed short when compared to the buildings around it, though they must have landed forty floors above street level. But it was a good place from which to spy out the land.

They dropped on it. Then Kartr whirled, his blaster out—aimed for the middle of the black thing scuttling toward him from the roof shadows. He tried in the same instant for mind contact—to recoil with an instant of real panic. And Rolth put his discovery into words.

"Robot—guard—maybe—"

Kartr was back in the sled as Rolth brought it up above the head of the figure.

Robot, guard or attendant, the thing stopped short when the sled left the stage surface. As they went on up it turned squarely and trundled away into the dark. Kartr relaxed. The metal guardian could have beamed them both before they had even had a chance to sight it. Of course, it might only have been an attendant—but there was no sense in taking the risk.

"No more landing stages," he said and Rolth agreed with him fervently.

"Those creatures might be conditioned to a voice or a key word—give them the wrong answer and they take you apart quick—"

"Wait a minute." Kartr put his blaster back in its holster. "We're judging this city by what we know of our own civilization." He squinted against the brilliance of a wave of green light and recited the instructions of their manual, "There is always something new for the finder, go out with an open mind—"

"And," Rolth added, "a ready blaster! Yes, I know all that. But human nature remains the same and I'd rather be wary than dead. Look down there—see those squares of pavement between the buildings? How about setting down on one of those? No landing stage alarms or controls we could trigger—"

"Promising. Can you get in behind that big block? Its shadow should hide us well—"

Rolth might not get as much speed out of the sled as Fylh did, but his caution on such a mission as this was more to be desired than the Trystian's reckless disregard for the laws of gravity. Earthing required of him a good five minutes of painful maneuvering, but he brought them down in the middle of the pool of shadow Kartr had indicated.

They did not stir from their seats at once, but sat watching for robots, for any moving thing which might promise menace.

"A city"—Rolth stated the obvious—"is not the place to play hide and seek in. I'm sure that I'm being watched—maybe from up there—" He jerked a thumb at the lines of blank windows overlooking the court in which they had landed.

That eerie sensation—that myriad eyes were peering hostilely from the blank expanses—Kartr knew it too. But his sense told him it was a lie.

"Nothing lives here," he assured the Faltharian. "Not even a robot."

They moved away from the sled, skirting the side of the nearest building, staying in the shadows, racing across lighted open spaces. Rolth ran his fingers along the wall at his shoulder. "Old, very old. I can feel the scars of erosion."

"But the lights? How long could those keep running?" wondered Kartr.

"Ask your friend from Agerat. Maybe he put them in working order when he arrived. Who knows?"

There was little ornamentation on the buildings they passed, the walls were smoothly functional, yet the very way the towers and blocks were fitted into a harmonious whole argued that they were the product of a civilization so advanced in architecture as to present a city as a unit, instead of a collection of buildings and dwellings of individual tastes and periods. So far Kartr had seen no inscriptions on any of the structures.

Rolth's blue torch flashed on and off regularly as they went, pin-dotting their trail through this new kind of wilderness. When they wanted to retrace their way he need only touch his light again on these walls and the tiny blue circles would glow in return for a second.

The rangers made a half circle around one of the three buildings hedging in the court and crept along a street into the surface of which their feet sank almost ankle deep. The old pavement was covered with a thick growth of short tough grass. Half a block ahead, from a recess between two buildings, a rainbow of light played. They approached it cautiously—to come upon a fountain, a fountain of plumed light as well as tinkling water. The flood it raised sank back into a round basin, the rim of which was broken on the side near them so that a small stream was free to cut a channel through the sod until it reached a hole in the ancient pavement.