And by their size, Howell guessed them to be the skeletons of three human children, perhaps twelve years old.
He made inarticulate noises in his throat as he went back to the Marintha. When he arrived where Karen and Breen and Ketch watched anxiously from the exit-port, he was still unable to speak coherently. It was long minutes, with Karen looking frightenedly at him, before he was able to give an understandable account of what he’d seen.
“The—the globe’s a dummy,” he said, his voice still thick with fury. “It’s bait. It’s a trap for—humans, using the message-beam as a lure. The message must say that there’s a human ship aground and calling for help!”
“We’ve got to make something to kill them with!” he said fiercely. “The slug-ship things! Because the trap worked! A human ship—of people whose ships must be globes—a human ship came! Its people went toward the globe. Maybe they guessed they were too late because they got no answers to their calls. But they went there. And—and somewhere near the globe one of them touched a trip-wire or a trigger. And then—a killer-field went on—and everything within a quarter of a mile died instantly!”
His fists were clenched. He was fury and rage incarnate.
“The others of the ship—they probably risked going after some of the bodies. But they didn’t dare go too far. There were three of them they didn’t dare try to reach. They’re still there. And I’m pretty sure they’re—children.”
He went and locked himself in the control room. He heard small cracklings. The all-wave receiver, still muted against self-revelation, emitted the noises associated with a solar flare. It was not important, but it reminded him that there was a slug-ship on the way here, confirmed now in its guess at the Marintha’s destination by the drive-sounds made by the solar-system drive during the yacht’s landing.
The slug-ship wasn’t hurrying. It followed the Marintha leisurely, like hunters after a game animal whose trail is plain and which cannot possibly hope to get away.
A long time later Howell came out again. Ketch nodded reassuringly to Karen.
“He’s all right now, and with new ideas of what we’re to do and how we’ll do it.”
There could have been a touch of sarcasm in Ketch’s tone, but Howell nodded. He said in a carefully controlled voice:
“I’ve been thinking. We’ll get out the capacitor and see what can be done with it. Maybe not all the plates are ruined. Maybe if we take out the spoiled ones, we can reassemble something with enough capacity to work. Maybe we can improvise extra plates. If it’s absolutely necessary, there’s some material in the scenery the slug-creatures built for their booby trap.”
Karen made a wordless sound of protest.
“I know!” said Howell. “But I think I know how to get to the damned thing and turn it off without tripping it. If it’s necessary I’ll try it. Otherwise not.”
“But there’s no point in taking extra chances!” Ketch protested. “We should think of something to be done—”
Howell said nothing. In drama-tapes, the principal characters always found a last-instant solution to their difficulties. Ketch likened their very real predicament to the contrived ones of taped narratives.
“Breen?” asked Howell.
“Botanizing,” said Karen. “He said he wouldn’t go far.”
Howell grimaced. There was so much work to be done, and Breen went poking about looking at plants! But he wouldn’t be of much use in the engine room. Ketch would be better.
“I’m going to take down the capacitor,” Howell said, without happy anticipation but because it was all that could be done.
“Hold on!” protested Ketch. “Shouldn’t we move the yacht first? Hide it and ourselves?”
“The booby trap hasn’t been visited in a long time,” said Howell, “or they’d have repaired the tear in its plating that gives the whole show away. But we may need some material from it. And also, our drive would be spotted when we moved.”
Ketch shrugged his shoulders almost up to his ears. He said, “Excuse me, Karen. We’ve a problem to solve.”
Howell couldn’t spare the energy to be annoyed by Ketch’s adoption of the manner of a dramatic actor. He went into the control room, and Ketch followed. They set to work. Ketch seemed to expect either Howell or himself to make some startling discovery which would solve all problems. Such triumphs were not rare—in fiction. But here there was danger, about which they could do nothing for their own safety. There was danger to more than themselves, about which apparently they could do even less. If the Marintha fell into the hands of the slug-ship creatures, even if the four humans now aboard were not discovered, every item of her design and equipment would be proof that there was another human race somewhere in the galaxy. The absence of fighting-ship weapons would be proof, too, that this other race was totally unprepared for battle. And to creatures who would make booby traps for humans, baited with a call for help that they might murder anyone who responded, the prospect of a wholesale massacre would be delightful. They might still have records or traditions of the long-ago extermination of the race of the rubble-heap cities. They might know where to look for them again, guessing that a pitiful numbers of survivors of that butchery might have rebuilt a civilization while forgetting what had destroyed its forerunner.
Howell worked with a grim, set face. Ketch helped with a tendency to make unnecessary, dramatic gestures. They got the capacitor out of its built-in niche. They took it apart. It was hopelessly wrecked. There wasn’t an unpunctured plate or a not-cracked dielectric sheet.
“It’s no go,” said Howell. “We’ve got to work out something else.”
Ketch considered. Then he said, “It seems to me that we should be able to hide somewhere on this planet and live on game we shoot and so on.”
His tone was not that of someone suggesting a regrettable possibility. Howell made no answer at all, but his silence was a more definite disagreement than any possible statement of disapproval would have been.
Breen came back. He was placidly pleased. He had highly interesting botanical specimens, indicating a biological invention paralleling but not duplicating a cross-fertilization process worked out by vegetation on Handel’s Planet. It was a triumph. But there was more.
“There’s a rubble-heap city somewhere near,” he announced. “Look!”
There were eight plant-species—all food-plants—which were found on every planet formerly occupied by the last race of mankind. They did not fit into the evolutionary lines of the worlds on which they were found. They had been introduced by the lost race, the builders of the cities now reduced to debris. Breen had found three of the eight species here. This was evidence that there must be a smashed city somewhere on this world. To Breen, it was splendid progress in the purpose of the Marintha’s voyage. It was his aim to find the planet on which the eight species had developed by evolutionary mutation and selection. If he found that world, he’d have found the home world of the lost race, where it began and developed until it was vastly greater and more civilized than mankind of today. If Breen made the discovery and it was verified by other sciences, he would feel that he had not lived in vain.
Karen readied a meal while her father talked expansively of his discovery. There was nothing to be done outside the yacht, and rather less to be done within it, now that the capacitor was known to be destroyed rather than damaged. Howell was not capable of casual conversation, he was so disturbed. His former pessimism had returned when the possibility of making contact with enemies of the slug-ship had vanished. The Marintha could support the four of them almost indefinitely, if left alone. It could travel to the other planets of this system, with the same proviso. But there was only one way in which the situation could imaginably be improved. He considered that one way practically hopeless—but it must be tried.