It was very near. Trent said, "What's the trouble?"
"Cap'n," said the voice anxiously, "we knocked down a ship, and it land of split open, and there's a woman in it!"
Then a grenade went off a little distance away. A rifle cracked. A man screamed. There were other sounds of combat.
From a distance great enough to let all the grounded ships be seen at once, there would have appeared to be very little activity of any sort. There were the occasional cracklings of firearms. They made tiny sparks. Now and again—rarely, now—there were explosions of other sorts. They made flashes. Sometimes they were satchel bombs. More often they were grenades.
Trent said shakily, "Marian! You're all right? The others—"
Marian said in a queer voice, as if she still couldn't believe in what had happened, "They put us… hostages in that ship and welded up the ports. They'd ruined the engines and the drive. They told us if the Cytheria didn't bring back… agreement to their terms they'd… bring us out and… make pictures of… of what happened to us… before we died. And they'd send those tapes with word that they'd take more prisoners and… do the same unless—"
Trent's throat was dry and seemed to be trying to shut to strangle him. At the same time his voice was thick and furry with hatred.
"I said are you all right? All of you?"
"We're quite all right," said Marian unsteadily, "only we… don't quite believe it."
There were eight or ten women and three men released from a welded-shut ship-hull by its fall. Strangely enough, as prisoners waiting to be the victims of carefully photographed atrocity, they had been made afraid by the recurrent minor shocks and tremors of this valley. Instead of staying in the cabins and accommodations of the ship's bow, they'd huddled in its sternmost part, nearest to the ground. The bow of a ship would be hundreds of feet high and it could have a completely destructive fall. But the stern section could only overturn. This ship had been toppled because it was lately landed and the ground was scorched beneath it. The prisoners in it, being merely shaken up by their trivial fall, had crawled out of a lock door twisted open despite its welding. They'd come out expecting to be recaptured or murdered. They'd had no hope to urge them; only fear. But Trent's men were not inclined to kill women. They'd bawled for him when the freed prisoners were discovered.
"Stay here," he commanded fiercely. "Guard them until we clean up the mess!"
He went away again. There was still darkness everywhere, but to the east an infinitely faint, rosy fading of the sky began. A rifle on automatic fire spat spiteful sparks to the left. Trent went to it. A grenade exploded farther on.
"What's going on?" he demanded. He was filled with remarkable emotions. Marian was again out of a predicament in which the folly of other men had involved her. He and he alone had proved capable of action to get her out. He was succeeding. "What's going on?" he demanded almost genially.
A member of the Yarrow's crew spat with great deliberation.
"Some characters in this ship here are tryin' to get out. Three-four got out. We bagged 'em. Now the others are hollerin' crazy-like. They want to know who's shooting."
"Tell them Santa Claus," said Trent. "Why not a grenade?"
He moved away. He heard the grenade explode behind him. Something huge loomed before him and overhead. It was the nose of a fallen ship. He heard sounds from inside it. Its control room viewports, or some of them, had been smashed in its fall. Now a loud speaker incredibly gave out speech from inside there. A savage, half-hysterical voice raged; "Somehow somebody's landed here! Get to the Jocunda! Fight your way here and make it fast!"
Somewhere in the valley an occupied pirate ship hadn't toppled. Somewhere a freebooter remained upright, and in some manner it had become aware that the noises outside it were not distant detonations but nearby bombs. It called to what other ships contained their crews. To a great degree that call was bound to be futile. But Trent found a specific object for his hatred. This ship would be in a sense the headquarters ship of the pirates of the Pleiads. It remained aground; it had stayed aground so long that green stuff grew about its base. It would have been kept provided with fuel and air-stores, ready to be used for escape should such a thing unthinkably be needed. Now it called on all pirates not trapped or disabled to join it. Most of them wouldn't hear it. Space-phone units would mostly have been shattered by the long fall of the fated ships' bows. Of those who survived, such as Trent had heard, most would be found in crushed and empty control rooms. Men in a ship that had fallen crashing from the vertical would either be dead, or they'd be injured, or they'd be trying frantically to get out to the sulfur-smelling out-of-doors.
But there were some who'd probably gotten their warning before Trent overheard the message. If he'd kept his personal space-phone turned on, he'd have known. More, the Yarrow's mate, aloft with those gigantic boulders which should have been a moon, would have heard the hysterical command. He'd be worried, but at least he'd know that the landing party was aground and was in action against the pirates.
The redness to the east grew brighter. Trent saw a man running crazily. He was not armed as the members of the landing party were. He was in flight. He passed behind a hulk that half an hour earlier had been a spaceship at least capable of lifting to the sky. He came out, running toward a group of still and silent ships standing on green-covered ground. Somewhere a rifle racketed in automatic fire. The running man collapsed. Trent growled. He headed in that direction.
Another man. Two others. They'd been warned by space-phone, but they didn't attempt to fight. They ran like deer toward the spires which were landed and looted and rusted space craft. A rifle cracked on one-shot fire. It cracked again, and again. One man fell all of a heap, his arms flailing. The solitary rifle began again.
Trent couldn't stop it, so he stood still, straining his eyes in the slowly, slowly increasing crimson light to see which of the presumable hulks they fled toward. That one mustn't lift off. It mustn't!
A running man fell. More than one rifle concentrated on the last man afoot. They made popping sounds. He began to zigzag crazily. He knew that the bullets whining past were aimed at him. He must have known that several men were shooting in the zestful competition of a sporting event.
He fell, and rolled over and over, and lay still. But Trent had identified the supposed hulk which had been his hope of refuge. He began to gather men for an assault upon it. There was a woeful lack of satchel bombs. Most of them had been used to admirable effect. He started toward the group of abandoned ships, of which one must be called the Jocunda and contained at least some of the pirates who a half-hour since had snored in their sins while Trent and his men came down into the valley.
There were flames. Monstrous flames spurted out from beneath a rusting hull. That would be the Jocunda. She rose from the ground, spouting hellfire. The flames were blue-white and so intense that for long moments the increasing ruddy light of dawn seemed whitened. With its Lawlor drive giving all possible help to its rockets, it crawled, then climbed, then seemed to fall toward the smoky heavens overhead. Trent watched it bitterly as it dwindled to a speck which in the red light of sunrise looked like a ruby in the sky.
Then he switched on his space-phone. He began to call, "Calling Yarrow! Calling Yarrow! Trent calling Yarrow!"
Almost instantly the mate's voice came back. It sounded relieved.
"Come in, Captain! I've been hearing some fancy stuff from aground there. 'You all right?"