XXII.
Jason stood to one side and watched the deadly cargo being loaded intothe hold of the ship. The Pyrrans were in good humor as they stowed awayriot guns, grenades and gas bombs. When the back-pack atom bomb was putaboard one of them broke into a marching song, and the others picked itup. Maybe they were happy, but the approaching carnage only filled Jasonwith an intense gloom. He felt that somehow he was a traitor to life.Perhaps the life form he had found needed destroying--and perhaps itdidn't. Without making the slightest attempt at conciliation,destruction would be plain murder.
Kerk came out of the operations building and the starter pumps could beheard whining inside the ship. They would leave within minutes. Jasonforced himself into a foot-dragging rush and met Kerk halfway to theship.
"I'm coming with you, Kerk. You owe me at least that much for findingthem."
Kerk hesitated, not liking the idea. "This is an operational mission,"he said. "No room for observers, and the extra weight-- And it's toolate to stop us Jason, you know that."
"You Pyrrans are the worst liars in the universe," Jason said. "We bothknow that ship can lift ten times the amount it's carrying today.Now ... do you let me come, or forbid me without reason at all?"
"Get aboard," Kerk said. "But keep out of the way or you'll gettrampled."
This time, with a definite destination ahead, the flight was muchfaster. Meta took the ship into the stratosphere, in a high ballisticarc that ended at the islands. Kerk was in the co-pilot's seat, Jasonsat behind them where he could watch the screens. The landing party,twenty-five volunteers, were in the hold below with the weapons. All thescreens in the ship were switched to the forward viewer. They watchedthe green island appear and swell, then vanish behind the flames of thebraking rockets. Jockeying the ship carefully, Meta brought it down on aflat shelf near the cave mouth.
Jason was ready this time for the blast of mental hatred--but it stillhurt. The gunners laughed and killed gleefully as every animal on theisland closed in on the ship. They were slaughtered by the thousands,and still more came.
"Do you have to do this?" Jason asked. "It's murder--carnage, justbutchering those beasts like that."
"Self-defense," Kerk said. "They attack us and they get killed. Whatcould be simpler? Now shut up, or I'll throw you out there with them."
It was a half an hour before the gunfire slackened. Animals stillattacked them, but the mass assaults seemed to be over. Kerk spoke intothe intercom.
"Landing party away--and watch your step. They know we're here and willmake it as hot as they can. Take the bomb into that cave and see how farback it runs. We can always blast them from the air, but it'll do nogood if they're dug into solid rock. Keep your screen open, leave thebomb and pull back at once if I tell you to. Now move."
* * * * *
The men swarmed down the ladders and formed into open battle formation.They were soon under attack, but the beasts were picked off before theycould get close. It didn't take long for the man at point to reach thecave. He had his pickup trained in front of him, and the watchers in theship followed the advance.
"Big cave," Kerk grunted. "Slants back and down. What I was afraid of.Bomb dropped on that would just close it up. With no guarantee thatanything sealed in it, couldn't eventually get out. We'll have to seehow far down it goes."
There was enough heat in the cave now to use the infra-red filters. Therock walls stood out harshly black and white as the advance continued.
"No signs of life since entering the cave," the officer reported."Gnawed bones at the entrance and some bat droppings. It looks like anatural cave--so far."
Step by step the advance continued, slowing as it went. Insensitive asthe Pyrrans were to psi pressure, even they were aware of the blast ofhatred being continuously leveled at them. Jason, back in the ship, hada headache that slowly grew worse instead of better.
"_Watch out!_" Kerk shouted, staring at the screen with horror.
The cave was filled from wall to wall with pallid, eyeless animals. Theypoured from tiny side passages and seemed to literally emerge from theground. Their front ranks dissolved in flame, but more kept pressing in.On the screen the watchers in the ship saw the cave spin dizzily as theoperator fell. Pale bodies washed up and concealed the lens.
"Close ranks--flame-throwers and gas!" Kerk bellowed into the mike.
Less than half of the men were alive after that first attack. Thesurvivors, protected by the flame-throwers, set off the gas grenades.Their sealed battle armor protected them while the section of cavefilled with gas. Someone dug through the bodies of their attackers andfound the pickup.
"Leave the bomb there and withdraw," Kerk ordered. "We've had enoughlosses already."
A different man stared out of the screen. The officer was dead. "Sorry,sir," he said, "but it will be just as easy to push ahead as back aslong as the gas grenades hold out. We're too close now to pull back."
"That's an order," Kerk shouted, but the man was gone from the screenand the advance continued.
Jason's fingers hurt where he had them clamped to the chair arm. Hepulled them loose and massaged them. On the screen the black and whitecave flowed steadily towards them. Minute after minute went by this way.Each time the animals attacked again, a few more gas grenades were usedup.
"Something ahead--looks different," the panting voice cracked from thespeaker. The narrow cave slowly opened out into a gigantic chamber, solarge the roof and far walls were lost in the distance.
"What are those?" Kerk asked. "Get a searchlight over to the rightthere."
The picture on the screen was fuzzy and hard to see now, dimmed by thelayers of rock in-between. Details couldn't be made out clearly, but itwas obvious this was something unusual.
"Never saw ... anything quite like them before," the speaker said. "Looklike big plants of some kind, ten meters tall at least--yet they'removing. Those branches, tentacles or whatever they are, keep pointingtowards us and I get the darkest feeling in my head ..."
"Blast one, see what happens," Kerk said.
The gun fired and at the same instant an intensified wave of mentalhatred rolled over the men, dropping them to the ground. They rolled inpain, blacked out and unable to think or fight the underground beaststhat poured over them in renewed attack.
In the ship, far above, Jason felt the shock to his mind and wonderedhow the men below could have lived through it. The others in the controlroom had been hit by it as well. Kerk pounded on the frame of the screenand shouted to the unhearing men below.
"Pull back, come back ..."
It was too late. The men only stirred slightly as the victorious Pyrrananimals washed over them, clawing for the joints in their armor. Onlyone man moved, standing up and beating the creatures away with his barehands. He stumbled a few feet and bent over the writhing mass below him.With a heave of his shoulders he pulled another man up. The man was deadbut his shoulder pack was still strapped to his back. Bloody fingersfumbled at the pack, then both men were washed back under the wave ofdeath.
"That was the bomb!" Kerk shouted to Meta. "If he didn't change thesetting, it's still on ten-second minimum. Get out of here!"
* * * * *
Jason had just time to fall back on the acceleration couch before therockets blasted. The pressure leaned on him and kept mounting. Visionblacked out but he didn't lose consciousness. Air screamed across thehull, then the sound stopped as they left the atmosphere behind.
Just as Meta cut the power a glare of white light burst from thescreens. They turned black instantly as the hull pickups burned out. Sheswitched filters into place, then pressed the button that rotated newpickups into position.
Far below, in the boiling sea, a climbing cloud of mushroom-shaped flamefilled the spot where the island had been seconds before. The three ofthem looked at it, silently and unmoving. Kerk recovered first.
"Head for home, Meta, and get operations on the screen. Twenty-five mendead,
but they did their job. They knocked out those beasts--whateverthey were--and ended the war. I can't think of a better way for a man todie."
Meta set the orbit, then called operations.
"Trouble getting through," she said. "I have a robot landing beamresponse, but no one is answering the call."
A man appeared on the empty screen. He was beaded with sweat and had aharried look in his eyes. "Kerk," he said, "is that you? Get the shipback here at once. We need her firepower at the perimeter. All blazesbroke loose a minute ago, a general attack from every side, worse thanI've ever seen."
"What do you mean?" Kerk stammered in unbelief. "The war is over--weblasted them, destroyed their headquarters completely."
"The war is going like it never has gone before," the other snappedback. "I don't know what you did, but it stirred up the stewpot of hellhere. Now stop talking and get the ship back!"
Kerk turned slowly to face Jason, his face pulled back in a look of rawanimal savagery.
"You--! You did it! I should have killed you the first time I saw you. Iwanted to, now I know I was right. You've been like a plague since youcame here, sowing death in every direction. I knew you were wrong, yet Ilet your twisted words convince me. And look what has happened. Firstyou killed Welf. Then you murdered those men in the cave. Now thisattack on the perimeter--all who die there, you will have killed!"
Kerk advanced on Jason, step by slow step, hatred twisting his features.Jason backed away until he could retreat no further, his shouldersagainst the chart case. Kerk's hand lashed out, not a fighting blow, butan open slap. Though Jason rolled with it, it still battered him andstretched him full length on the floor. His arm was against the chartcase, his fingers near the sealed tubes that held the jump matrices.
Jason seized one of the heavy tubes with both hands and pulled it out.He swung it with all his strength into Kerk's face. It broke the skinon his cheekbone and forehead and blood ran from the cuts. But it didn'tslow or stop the big man in the slightest. His smile held no mercy as hereached down and dragged Jason to his feet.
"Fight back," he said, "I will have that much more pleasure as I killyou." He drew back the granite fist that would tear Jason's head fromhis shoulders.
"Go ahead," Jason said, and stopped struggling. "Kill me. You can do iteasily. Only don't call it justice. Welf died to save me. But the men onthe island died because of your stupidity. I wanted peace and you wantedwar. Now you have it. Kill me to soothe your conscience, because thetruth is something you can't face up to."
With a bellow of rage Kerk drove the pile-driver fist down.
Meta grabbed the arm in both her hands and hung on, pulling it asidebefore the blow could land. The three of them fell together, halfcrushing Jason.
"Don't do it," she screamed. "Jason didn't want those men to go downthere. That was your idea. You can't kill him for that!"
Kerk, exploding with rage, was past hearing. He turned his attention toMeta, tearing her from him. She was a woman and her supple strength wasmeager compared to his great muscles. But she was a Pyrran woman and shedid what no off-worlder could. She slowed him for a moment, stopped thefury of his attack until he could rip her hands loose and throw heraside. It didn't take him long to do this, but it was just time enoughfor Jason to get to the door.
* * * * *
Jason stumbled through, and jammed shut the lock behind him. A splitsecond after he had driven the bolt home Kerk's weight plunged into thedoor. The metal screamed and bent, giving way. One hinge was torn looseand the other held only by a shred of metal. It would go down on thenext blow.
Jason wasn't waiting for that. He hadn't stayed to see if the door wouldstop the raging Pyrran. No door on the ship could stop him. Fast aspossible, Jason went down the gangway. There was no safety on the ship,which meant he had to get off it. The lifeboat deck was just ahead.
Ever since first seeing them, he had given a lot of thought to thelifeboats. Though he hadn't looked ahead to this situation, he knew atime might come when he would need transportation of his own. Thelifeboats had seemed to be the best bet, except that Meta had told himthey had no fuel. She had been right in one thing--the boat he had beenin had empty tanks, he had checked. There were five other boats, though,that he hadn't examined. He had wondered about the idea of uselesslifeboats and come to what he hoped was a correct conclusion.
This spaceship was the only one the Pyrrans had. Meta had told him oncethat they always had planned to buy another ship, but never did. Someother necessary war expense managed to come up first. One ship wasreally enough for their uses. The only difficulty lay in the fact theyhad to keep that ship in operation or the Pyrran city was dead. Withoutsupplies they would be wiped out in a few months. Therefore the ship'screw couldn't conceive of abandoning their ship. No matter what kind oftrouble she got into, they couldn't leave her. When the ship died, sodid their world.
With this kind of thinking, there was no need to keep the lifeboatsfueled. Not all of them, at least. Though it stood to reason at leastone of them held fuel for short flights that would have been wastefulfor the parent ship. At this point Jason's chain of logic grew weak. Toomany "ifs." _If_ they used the lifeboats at all, one of them should befueled. _If_ they did, it would be fueled now. And _if_ it werefueled--which one of the six would it be? Jason had no time to golooking. He had to be right the first time.
His reasoning had supplied him with an answer, the last of a long lineof suppositions. If a boat were fueled, it should be the one nearest tothe control cabin. The one he was diving towards now. His life dependedon this string of guesses.
Behind him the door went down with a crash. Kerk bellowed and leaped.Jason hurled himself through the lifeboat port with the nearest thing toa run he could manage under the doubled gravity. With both hands hegrabbed the emergency launching handle and pulled down.
An alarm bell rang and the port slammed shut, literally in Kerk's face.Only his Pyrran reflexes saved him from being smashed by it.
Solid-fuel launchers exploded and blasted the lifeboat clear of theparent ship. Their brief acceleration slammed Jason to the deck, then hefloated as the boat went into free fall. The main drive rockets didn'tfire.
In that moment Jason learned what it was like to know he was dead.Without fuel the boat would drop into the jungle below, falling like arock and blasting apart when it hit. There was no way out.
Then the rockets caught, roared, and he dropped to the deck, bruisinghis nose. He sat up, rubbing it and grinning. There was fuel in thetanks--the delay in starting had only been part of the launching cycle,giving the lifeboat time to fall clear of the ship. Now to get it undercontrol. He pulled himself into the pilot's seat.
The altimeter had fed information to the autopilot, leveling the boatoff parallel to the ground. Like all lifeboat controls these werechildishly simple, designed to be used by novices in an emergency. Theautopilot could not be shut off, it rode along with the manual controls,tempering foolish piloting. Jason hauled the control wheel into a tightturn and the autopilot gentled it to a soft curve.
Through the port he could see the big ship blaring fire in a muchtighter turn. Jason didn't know who was flying it or what they had inmind--he took no chances. Jamming the wheel forward into a dive hecursed as they eased into a gentle drop. The larger ship had no suchrestrictions. It changed course with a violent maneuver and dived onhim. The forward turret fired and an explosion at the stern rocked thelittle boat. This either knocked out the autopilot or shocked it intosubmission. The slow drop turned into a power dive and the junglebillowed up.
Jason pulled the wheel back and there was just time to get his arms infront of his face before they hit.
Thundering rockets and cracking trees ended in a great splash. Silencefollowed and the smoke drifted away. High above, the spaceship circledhesitantly. Dropping a bit as if wanting to go down and investigate.Then rising again as the urgent message for aid came from the city.Loyalty won and she turned and spewed fire towards home
.