“The com’s jammed,” he repeated absently. Then he turned to Meshler. “You came in a flitter. Let me take that—I’m free of the shakes now.”
“For how long?” Tau’s demand was so emphatic that it caught Cartl’s attention, and he did look to the medic. “You are over this bout, yes. But cold will bring on another. And if you start and then black out, what good will that do you or anyone else? Listen to Thorson here. You may not have heard of what he has to say, but we know that it worked before in a similar situation. You are a com-tech by training, so this should be a way to help your people.”
“What is it then?” Now Cartl did give his attention to Dane, but there was an impatience about him, as if he expected to hear nothing of use and resented the trouble of giving judgment.
“I’m no com-tech, and I don’t know your technical terms—but this is what a Free Trader did when his ship was jammed by a jack after his cargo.” And he gave the story stripped to bare details.
The knife, which had been moving back and forth in Cartl’s fingers when Dane had started, was still.
“Counter-interference in pulse pattern,” the settler said. “And what kind of code?”
“Nothing elaborate. Just identification and a call for help.”
Cartl returned the honor knife to its sheath. “Yes. And if Kaysee did not get through—” He rose, swaying for a moment but avoiding the hand Tau advanced to steady him. Then he went to the com.
A touch on the switch brought the crackle up to louder waves of sound. Cartl listened intently. His lips moved. He might have been counting.
Then he pulled out a seat and half fell into it, still with that intent, listening look. He reached under the table on which part of the equipment was based and brought out a box of tools. Unscrewing a panel, he switched off the receiver and then went to work, slowly, almost fumblingly at first, and then with more speed and surety. At last he leaned back, his hands resting on the edge of the table, his shoulders drooping a little, as if his labor had exhausted what small strength he had regained.
“That’s it. But will it work?” He seemed to be asking that of himself, not of the three behind him.
The brach had been stretched out before the fire, basking in the heat. But now he sat up on his haunches, his forepaws folded over his belly. His head was not turned toward the men in the corner, but there was about the alien an aura of listening that caught Dane’s attention, and he watched the brach rather than Cartl, who had set two wires delicately together and was now tapping in a broken rhythm.
Dane crossed to sit on the cot Cartl had lately left.
“What is it?” He had picked up his thermo jacket and spoke into the hood mike.
“There is coming,” replied the brach.
“Of that which we must fear?” Dane asked quickly.
“There is fear—but it lies with those who come. And there is hurt also—”
“How near?”
The brach’s head swung slowly back and forth, as if his long nose was pointer for a detect.
“Coming fast, but not yet here.” That seemed evasive. “There is fear, much, much fear. And all have it.” Dane arose and spoke to the others. “The brach says some are coming. He says they are hurt and afraid.”
In spite of that loud mixture of sound from the com, Cartl must have heard. He swung around to face Dane. “When?”
“The brach says they are coming fast.”
Cartl was already on his feet. He did not reach for the shaggy coat he had worn cloakwise earlier, but he did pause to snatch up his weapon. And Meshler was at the door before him, blaster in hand.
They ran for the gate of the fort, Cartl in the lead. The others caught up with him only after he had leaped to a ledge along one of the gate side buildings from which they could see the outer world. The moon was bright, and under it the snow gave back sparks of glitter.
Now they could hear it. There was no wind high enough to hide the steady beat of a flitter engine. Cartl gave a cry of relief and leaned out to hit a button, so that lights flared on, marking a landing space. Meshler half raised an arm as if to turn them off but did not.
There were no running lights on the flier. It came in dark and somehow ominous under the moon. When it set down, they saw that it was larger than the one they had stolen from the basin camp, almost double the size of the one carried by the Queen. Round-bellied, it was obviously intended to carry cargo, but now both cabin and cargo hatches sprang open, and a group of figures spilled out so hurriedly onto the field that
several stumbled and fell, others stooping to pull them up again, as if those inside were prisoners seeking freedom. Leaving the doors hanging open behind them, they made for the gate. One of the monsters might have been pounding at their heels.
Women—three, four, five, six—children to such a number that they must have been packed shoulder to shoulder inside. And behind them men, two with bandages, helping a third between them who made a stumbling, futile effort to walk.
Cartl threw open the gate and sprang to seize one of the women, one who had two children, one clinging to each hand. As he held her tight, the others crowded around them, crying out in some planet dialect the Terrans could not understand.
But Tau pushed past the women and reached the wounded, with Meshler and Dane only a step or two behind. With their aid he got the three back to the room they had just left.
It was sometime later they heard the full story. These were the women of Cartl’s holding and with them three of Vanatar’s group, plus the children of both. The wounded consisted of two of Cartl’s men and one, who was the worst mauled, of Vanatar’s.
They had had little warning. As Cartl had earlier believed, they had been spread out through the fields overseeing clearing robos, the women setting up fires to heat drinks and tending pots of food. Without warning then the nightmare had come. Their accounts of what they had seen and fled from were so varied that Dane deduced the larger part of the attacking force had been made up of more than one type of monster, all of them so alien to what the settlers knew that that very alienness added to the fright and horror.
Some of the work force had rallied quickly enough to trigger the robos in the fields to cover their retreat, and the settlers had broken into several groups. The ones reaching Cartl’s had luckily been close enough to the flitter park to fight their way there. But even then, they were not to escape easily, for the monsters were only the first wave of that hideous army. Behind were men, and they had used blasters, though from several accounts, mainly one from the men, the strangers had been both driving on the monsters and defending themselves from them.
A flitter had come to hover over the vehicle park, and a line of monsters had trailed along behind it, almost as if led on a leash. There had been a fight, two of them. And two parked flitters had been smashed past getting into the air, so the settlers’ first plan for evacuating this party to Cartl’s and then reaching one of the other isolated groups had failed.
“Got them then—” one of the men wearing a bandage down his left arm, strapped to his body, said. “Vanatar had a burner mounted on a crawler and was going to use it on thick brush. Yashty and I reached that. Got that sky-scum in the center. Then Cartl’s ship came in so we could take off with the women. I wasn’t much use with the arm, and Yashty got a knock on the head, but together we could make one pilot. Asmual had taken a nasty one and was laid out proper. So Thanmore said for us to get out while the air was still clear. They would hold the park with Cartl’s men and maybe get that crawler with the burner started so it could make it to the upside. We could still hear them going at that, so we knew some of our people reached it. But even if they hold out a while, they can’t do it forever. They have the robos for their main defense and a small burner, but not much else.”