Flandry placed himself in the turret by Chives. “As near as I can tell,” he said, “this is going to be a terrestroid planet.” “Shall we leave a note for its future inhabitants, sir?” asked the Shalmuan, dead-pan.
Flandry’s bark of laughter came from sheer tension. He added slowly, “It does make you wonder, though, what might have happened before Terra was born—”
Chives held up a hand. The red light pouring in turned his green skin a hideous color. “I think that is the Merseian beam, sir.”
Flandry glanced at the instruments. “Check. Let’s scoot.” He didn’t want the enemy radar to show two craft. He let Svantozik’s dwindle from sight while he sent the Hooligan leaping around the cluster. “We’d better come in about ten kilometers from the base, to be safely below their horizon,” he said. “Do you have them located, Chives?”
“I think so, sir. The irregularity of the central asteroid confuses identification, but … Let me read the course, sir, while you bring us in.”
Flandry took the controls. This would come as close to seat-of-the-pants piloting as was ever possible in space. Instruments and robots, faster and more precise than live flesh could ever hope to be, would still do most of the work; but in an unknown, shifting region like this, there must also be a brain, continuously making the basic decisions. Shall we evade this rock swarm at the price of running that ice cloud?
He activated the negagrav screens and swooped straight for his target. No local object would have enough speed to overcome that potential and strike the hull. But sheer impact on the yielding force field could knock a small vessel galley west, dangerously straining its metal.
Against looming nebular curtains, Flandry saw two pitted meteors come at him. They rolled and tumbled, like iron dice. He threw in a double vector, killing some forward velocity while he applied a “downward” acceleration. The Hooligan slid past. A jagged, turning cone, five kilometers long, lay ahead. Flandry whipped within meters of its surface. Something went by, so quickly his eyes registered nothing but an enigmatic fire-streak. Something else struck amidships. The impact rattled his teeth together. A brief storm of frozen gases, a comet, painted the viewscreens with red-tinged blizzard.
Then the main asteroid swelled before him. Chives called out figures. The Hooligan slipped over the whirling rough surface. “Here!” cried Chives. Flandry slammed to a halt. “Sir,” added the Shalmuan. Flandry eased down with great care. Silence fell. Blackness lowered beyond the hull. They had landed.
“Stand by,” said Flandry. Chives’ green face grew mutinous. “That’s an order,” he added, knowing how he hurt the other being, but without choice in the matter. “We may possibly need a fast get-away. Or a fast pursuit. Or, if everything goes wrong, someone to report back to Walton.”
“Yes, sir.” Chives could scarcely be heard. Flandry left him bowed over the control panel.
His crew, minus the two humans with Svantozik, were already in combat armor. A nuclear howitzer was mounted on the Donarrian’s centauroid back, a man astride to fire it. The pieces of a rocket launcher slanted across the two Gorzuni’s double shoulders. The Scothanian cried a war chant and swung his pet wrecking bar so the air whistled. The remaining five men formed a squad in one quick metallic clash.
Flandry put on his own suit and led the way out.
He stood in starless night. Only the wan glow from detector dials, and the puddle of light thrown in vacuum by a flashbeam, showed him that his eyes still saw. But as they adjusted, he could make out the very dimmest of cloudy red above him, and blood-drop sparks where satellite meteors caught sunlight. The gravity underfoot was so low that even in armor he was near weightlessness. Yet his inertia was the same. It felt like walking beneath some infinite ocean.
He checked the portable neutrino tracer. In this roil of nebular matter, all instruments were troubled, the dust spoke in every spectrum, a million-year birth cry. But there was clearly a small nuclear-energy plant ahead. And that could only belong to one place.
“Join hands,” said Flandry. “We don’t want to wander from each other. Radio silence, of course. Let’s go.”
They bounded over the invisible surface. It was irregular, often made slick by frozen gas. Once there was a shudder in the ground, and a roar traveling through their bootsoles. Some giant boulder had crashed.
Then the sun rose, vast and vague on the topplingly near horizon, and poured ember light across ice and iron. It climbed with visible speed. Flandry’s gang released hands and fell into approach tactics: dodge from pit to crag, wait, watch, make another long flat leap. In their black armor, they were merely a set of moving shadows among many.
The Merseian dome came into view. It was a blue hemisphere, purple in this light, nestled into a broad shallow crater. On the heights around there squatted negafield generators, to maintain a veil of force against the stony rain. It had been briefly turned off to permit Svantozik’s landing: the squat black flitter sat under a scarp, two kilometers from the dome. A small fast warcraft — pure Merseian, the final proof — berthed next to the shelter, for the use of the twenty or so beings whom it would accommodate. The ship’s bow gun was aimed at the Ardazirho boat. Routine precaution, and there were no other defenses. What had the Merseians to fear?
Flandry crouched on the rim and tuned his radio. Svantozik’s beam dispersed enough for him to listen to the conversation: ” — no, my lords, this visit is on my own initiative. I encountered a situation on Vixen so urgent that I felt it should be made known to you at once, rather than delaying to stop at Ardazir—” Just gabble, bluffing into blindness, to gain time for Flandry’s attack.
The man checked his crew. One by one, they made the swab-O sign. He led them forward. The force field did not touch ground; they slithered beneath it, down the crater wall, and wormed toward the dome. The rough, shadow-blotted rock gave ample cover.
Flandry’s plan was simple. He would sneak up close to the place and put a low-powered shell through. Air would gush out, the Merseians would die, and he could investigate their papers at leisure. With an outnumbered band, and so much urgency, he could not afford to be chivalrous.
“ — thus you see, my lords, it appeared to me the Terrans—” “All hands to space armor! We are being attacked!” The shout ripped at Flandry’s earphones. It had been in the Merseian Prime language, but not a Merseian voice. Somehow, incredibly, his approach had been detected.
“The Ardazirho is on their side! Destroy him!” Flandry hit the ground. An instant later, it rocked. Through all the armor, he felt a sickening belly blow. It seemed as if he saw the brief thermonuclear blaze through closed lids and a sheltering arm.
Without air for concussion, the shot only wiped out Svantozik’s boat. Volatilized iron whirled up, condensed, and sleeted down again. The asteroid shuddered to quiescence. Flandry leaped up. There was a strange dry weeping in his throat. He knew, with a small guiltiness, that he mourned more for Svantozik of the Janneer Ya than he did for the two humans who had died.
“ — attacking party is about sixteen degrees north o/ the sunrise point, 300 meters from the dome—”