He stood up and picked up the bulky but very light objects he and Karen had made together.
“The only bad feature,” he said thoughtfully, “is that even if we trap them, it may not do us a bit of good.”
He went out of the exit-port, carrying the dummies.
CHAPTER FOUR
He made his way again to the dead area, having a great deal of trouble with his burden of stuffed figures. Trees tried to block the way. Brushwood plucked at the clumsy bodies which nearby were so unconvincing. There was one time when a vine entangled a dragging stuffed leg, and he had to put down the whole burden to clear it. Again he found himself surrounded on three sides by tree trunks too close to let him through. He had to retrace his steps and find a more open way.
He reached the killed circle. He went into it, dodging tree trunks and with his unwieldy burden scraped at by the brittle sticks which once had been underbrush. Presently he tripped, and looked down to see what he’d tripped on. It was a fine wire coated with transparent plastic like all the metal objects of the slug-ship culture’s making. It had undoubtedly communicated with a relay, which some hours earlier would have flashed a killer-field to murder him and re-kill anything within its range. Now the killer-field generating outfit was smashed, and an essential part of it lay useless in the Marintha’s engine room.
But the trip-wire was information Howell needed. It told him where the foremost member of a rescue party, marching toward a booby trap that had lured them here, would have released pure death upon himself and all living things nearby as a reward for his altruism.
So Howell put down, here, the dummy representing himself. It would be plainly visible from the sky. He went back and placed the others as if while following him they had all been killed. It was an admirable picture of what would have appeared if the Marintha had been a rescue ship lured to this place by the message-beam—as the Marintha had been—and if all its ship’s company had gone unsuspectingly to their fate.
Having accomplished this errand, Howell was more than doubtful of its usefulness. He went doggedly back to the still-living jungle he’d left. He was fully aware, now, of the mischances that could turn any stratagem into futility. But it suddenly occurred to him that he and the others of the Marintha Were practically inviting catastrophe. He was suddenly appalled by the idea of Karen being left alone in the yacht. There were adventure tape-dramas—mostly historical or period pieces—in which people did experience danger and face disaster. But they were make-believe. And for believability most of them were laid in earlier times when humanity was not—as it now believed it was—plu-perfectly safe.
The four of them, Howell reflected angrily, were like children who’d never been really frightened. They pretended delicious terror for the fun of it. When they encountered really alarming things, they tended to react like children who do not like the way a game is going. They tried to stop playing. That was certainly the case with Breen, and probably with Ketch. They were now looking over the rubble remainders of a long-shattered city. For the time being, they’d stopped playing at flight from a slug-shaped enemy spaceship.
Howell hurried back toward the yacht. Just past the edge of the dead area he passed the spot where he’d put the three small skeletons under a decorous cover of green-stuff. He’d had nothing then with which to dig a grave, and he had nothing now. But he wouldn’t have stopped anyway because he began to think of shocking omissions in their reactions to real danger. Karen was alone in the ship, right now. They hadn’t monitored the all-wave receiver. Howell had computed the position and course and hence the time of arrival of the slug-ship on its way here now. It shouldn’t arrive for some time yet; but it could have driven again, planning to use power for deceleration on arrival. It could turn up any instant! And Karen would be alone, because he’d been out setting up a scenic effect, and Breen and Ketch were out botanizing!
He was almost running when he caught the first glimpses of the yacht between tree trunks. At a hundred yards he shouted. He heard the clanking of the metal dogs that held the port shut and sealed it. The port cracked open, and. Karen peered fearfully out. An infinite relief and gratitude showed on her face, but she was terrified.
She couldn’t speak when he vaulted up to the then fully opened port. She clung to him. She’d been crying. She was still frightened.
“What’s happened?” he demanded fiercely.
It was singular that he held her close, and this was the first time they’d ever acted other than decorously, but it was not the occasion for romantic speeches. He kissed her and repeated as fiercely as before, “What’s happened? What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
“There’s a—whine in the sky,” she said shakily. “The—the receiver picked it up. I heard it! It’s like—what you said was a slug-ship…”
She didn’t try to release herself. He asked grimly, “How long ago?”
“N-not long. Maybe five minutes…”
“Then we’ve some time. If it was landing, it’d be down now. It’s making one orbit to slow down. A low orbit could take around ninety minutes. We’ve got to get Ketch and your father.”
He kissed her and moved toward the control room. He came back and kissed her again. He vanished. Karen put her hand to her throat. She’d been frightened. But Howell had held her close and kissed her, and now her fears were dissipated. The reason for them was in no wise diminished, but nevertheless her eyes shone a little. And it could have been said that any two people of suitable age, thrown together as they had been these past three months, would either dislike each other excessively or care for each other a great deal. Karen would have denied it. She was quite sure that if she and Howell had never known each other, and their eyes had met on a crowded street, they’d have known what she was now sure of.
Howell threw the switch of the yacht’s outside siren. Space-liners were not equipped with such gadgets as sirens, but yachts found them desirable. Landing as yachtsmen did on worlds only other yachtsmen frequented, there was need of an audible signal to guide exploring parties and hunters back to the little ships that went everywhere with no thought of danger.
The yacht’s siren went “Whiro-o-o!” It would be hearable for miles. Howell came back. He put his arms around Karen again.
“That’ll fetch them,” he said confidently. He kissed her and said, “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time.”
She said unevenly, “I’ve—been wanting you to.”
“We won’t tell them for now.”
“No… not for now…”
It was insanity, of course. The Marintha was crippled and unarmed, and there was a slug-ship descending for a landing somewhere partway around this world. And slug-ships shot on sight at vessels like the Marintha. They made booby traps to murder humans, and there could be no doubt that the landing slug-ship would make the space-yacht a target for monstrous blaster-bolts of which one had already crippled her past repair.
The state of things offered no excuse for hope, unless it was that three-quarters of a mile away there were four dummies made from clothing of the Marintha’s crew. They lay, those dummies, in a blasted area in which nothing grew. If the slug-ship should notice them—which was doubtful—it might assume that all those who travelled in the Marintha had been killed and the yacht needn’t be destroyed before examination. But if it didn’t act on that assumption…
The siren wailed again. The sound would carry over the jungles of an unnamed planet, over hills and hollows, beating upon mountain-flanks and reflected from precipices. Breen and Ketch would hear it and assuredly hasten back. But in the meantime, Karen felt the magnificent uplift of spirit which comes to a girl when she becomes admittedly the most important thing in a chosen man’s life.