But the captain no longer seemed to be listening to him. Jellico gave a pull of his thermo hood, drawing it forward a little, and Dane caught sight of a com set in its side, much like the arrangement he himself had used to talk to the brach.
The brach! Why was it he kept forgetting the alien who had twice saved their lives—three times if you could count the breaking of the force field? It was almost as if something deliberately willed memory to sink to the back of his mind.
Now from behind the wreck trotted the creature from Xecho, walking on three legs. The fourth was folded up against his belly holding the second stunner. From the flitter dropped another brach, running with speed to meet her mate. They touched noses and then swung about, shoulder to shoulder, to face the Terrans.
Captain Jellico swung up his wrist, peeling back his glove to lay bare another mike, resembling the personna coms used by explorers.
“Finnerstan, some kind of a small airborne craft just took off—heading south. The brachs report it has one of the jacks on board. My guess, judging by what they are able to scan, is that it is the jack leader. And he must be heading for their command post. Intercept—”
There was no reply except a confirm click from the wrist mike. Dane sat up and waited apprehensively for his head to punish him. But, thanks to the medic, he was able to move, if weak. Rip got to his feet and reached down a long arm. And, pulling on it for support, Dane made it, too.
“Heading for the basin—”
“Basin? What basin?” Jellico demanded.
Dane muddled through the story of the force field prison, of the jack headquarters beyond. Jellico pushed his hood a little back and pulled at his lower lip. His expression—which was not really an expression but a stillness of feature—was one Dane knew of old to be the prelude to action.
“They had a flitter before,” he said, “that was brought down by the settlers. That was what they set this trap for, to get another flitter. They had to get back—they have a spacer there, and they wanted to take off.”
Captain Jellico came to sudden life. “Finnerstan, they have a ship waiting for planet lift—at a base to the south. Have you anything to patrol that way?”
The reply came as a squeak. Jellico frowned, holding the com close to his ear.
“The sonic,” Rip half whispered to Dane. “It interferes. And I don’t think they will be able to broadcast back to the port with that on. If they shut it off—”
“Exactly!” But whether Jellico meant that in answer to Shannon or to what the squeak conveyed, Dane was not sure.
“Meshler should know the location of the basin,” Dane offered. But looking around, he could not see the ranger.
“We have detects. They just won’t work around the sonics. Come on!”
Dane and Rip, the two brachs trotting ahead, as if they had had some forewarning, fell in behind Jellico moving to the flitter. But with his hand already on the hatch, the captain turned to look at Dane.
“You’re on sick call, Thorson.”
Dane shook his head and then wished that he hadn’t, as a warning thrust of pain suggested such gestures were not for him at present.
“I’ve been there—” It was a thin plea; Meshler would be the better guide. But somehow he wanted to see this through to the end. And when three men in Patrol uniforms and one of the spaceport policemen came running, he was vindicated, for when the ranger was asked for, the report was that he had gone back to the park to see if any vehicles could be brought to transport the wounded.
In the end they were a mixed expedition. The two brachs had squeezed far to the back of the flitter, crouched down side by side, as if fully determined to stay where they were, daring anyone to pull them out. For the rest there were three Patrolmen, their leader, Finnerstan, who came up just before they slammed the hatch, the spaceport policeman, two rangers, plus Jellico, Rip, and Dane.
It was rather a tight fit, and the captain himself had the pilot’s seat, Finnerstan beside him, the rest of them packed in the back. This was no cargo flitter, rather a troop carrier from the port, so that they at least had seats—hard though those were—and did not have to squat.
Dane was behind Jellico, and as the captain lifted the flitter into the air, he asked without turning his head, “Which direction?”
“South and west—the best I can do, sir.”
Finnerstan turned a little around to give him a measuring stare. “There is nothing there. We combed that district for months—”
“They are in a basin,” Dane returned, “and have rigged a distort over it. From above you can’t see anything—”
“A distort!” Finnerstan sounded incredulous. “But on such a scale as that—it is impossible!”
“From what I have heard and seen”—Captain Jellico’s tone was cold—“these Trosti people have proved a lot of impossible things possible. I imagine once they are all run to earth, there are going to be a lot of preconceived scientific ideas turned inside out, back to fore. A distort, eh? How did you find it then?”
“We followed a crawler track.”
“That gives us something—if we have daylight when we get near enough. But we have to make time. I don’t like the idea of something flying south. Pilot arrives with a warning, and they’ll lift off-world. Then—” He spoke to Finnerstan. “You may have finished their scheme here and now, but all you will have left are the pieces they have left behind. I can imagine they will leave precious few of those. What they can’t lift with them, they’ll destroy. And that’s the last thing we must let them do. Once we’re out of range of that sonic, you’d better code in a call. See if you can get help from the port. The Queen isn’t armed well enough to take on a ship in space. What about your cutter?”
“She can try,” but Finnerstan did not sound too certain. And Dane thought that with the curious devices these jacks appeared to have for their equipment, he could well understand the other’s apprehension.
If Finnerstan thought dark thoughts, they did not prevent him from experimenting with the flitter’s com until it was clear. Then he sent out a call, repeating it several times in code numbers, until a click of acknowledgement came. He dropped the mike back in its holder and said, “The cutter will space and go on patrol. Maybe she’ll be in time—They are widening their radar, so anything taking off from this continent will register.”
“Time,” Jellico echoed. “Well, we have no way of buying time unless we can anchor them some way. But there is no use making plans until we are sure we have something concrete on which to base them.”
19.SPOILS TO THE VICTORS
“What is going on?” Dane turned to Rip, wedged in beside him.
“What isn’t?” returned the other, ambiguously, but then he explained. “We don’t know it all yet, but the Trosti foundations, here and apparently on other worlds, too, have been engaged in double work. The
surface stuff is all that has always been accredited to them, what their reputation is founded upon. But underneath that, well, the Patrol has evidence now that they are the power behind at least four planetary governments in widely separated sections and that they have been building up an undercover net of control—”
“Who are they?” Dane interrupted. “Trosti is gone—or is he?”
“That’s just one of the mysteries, though there are two explanations for that. One is that he is still very much among the living and the brain behind this all, or else the brain who has selected the brains, for the conspiracy is a composite effort, and not only of one species either. The other suggestion is that Trosti was never anything but a front for a devious and diverse organization who used clever publicity to promote him as a romantic figure to center attention.