Breen stared at him. Then he rose to the occasion and said with fine casualness, “The rubble was excavated in four places that we found. The excavations go down deep in the rubble. All arrived at different depths at traces of corroded metal. Not all of them were iron. Apparently whoever dug them out had metal-detectors and could find out where to dig. And we found where a ship or ships had rested aground and later lifted off again. All this was no more than a day or two before we arrived. And we found that pinwheel. What does it mean?”
“It means we’ve some work ahead of us,” said Howell briskly, “after we’ve done what’s immediately necessary. They ought to be coming in sight shortly.”
He watched the screens in the control room. There was silence. Then the whine of a ship-drive, solar-system type. The slug-ship was coming in for a landing.
Howell said detachedly, “Children on a space voyage aren’t unusual, but children on a ship that mines metal out of rubble-heap cities—that’s something else! When there are booby traps set for them, that means they aren’t just an exploring party or even an expedition gathering up rubble-heap remains. It’s something all its own.”
The drive-whine was loud now. Howell pointed to a screen.
“There’s our friend. Low down. Barely above the trees.”
The bow vision-screen showed a moving shape. It was not of any design ever built by members of the human race now spreading out from Earth. It was utterly alien. It looked very nearly like a giant slug, even to twin horns at its forward parts, resembling the eye-stalks of those gastropoda. It seemed to be made of metal, but again the metal had been covered with something else. It could be guessed that there was a coating of plastic like that on the plates of the booby trap globe and the lethal units of the trap itself.
It checked its forward motion. Its drive-whine was loud and rasping. It came forward again. It changed course to circle the grounded space-yacht at a very considerable distance. It passed not far from the booby trap globe and almost over the dead area. The whining was loud indeed.
“We haven’t shot at them,” said Howell deliberately, “because we’ve nothing to shoot a ship with. But they’re pretty well convinced, now, that we’re dead. If they saw the dummies—and they should have—they ought to be quite sure.”
Karen interposed to explain the matter of the dummies, over the sound of the slug-ship’s drive. Ketch and Breen had known nothing about them. They’d been at the rubble-heap city when Howell climbed through treetops, and the dummies were made after that. Karen’s voice was quite steady. And this, like Howell’s more histrionic behaviour, reinforced the atmosphere of a drama-tape adventure tale.
Breen and Ketch could have been simply despairing, but instead they felt—though precariously—anticipation of action of disaster. Howell staged a scene of before-battle discussion. He didn’t believe his plan would succeed, but he couldn’t imagine not trying it. He expected to be killed. Worse, he expected Karen to be killed, too. But for Breen and Ketch and Karen—it was wise to pretend calm confidence.
The slug-ship apparently did see the dummies. Apparently it did not detect that they were fakes. Now it came directly to the Marintha and its drive-whine rose to a scream coming from the all-wave speaker. It came to a stop only hundreds of yards from the grounded, tilted, space-yacht, barely above treetop level, and the protuberances that looked like the eye-stalks of a slug pointed at the yacht as if at a target. The flexible stalks held weapons. Undoubtedly they were ready to fling the incandescent, giant, ball-lightning bolts at the slightest sign of movement on the Marintha.
There was stillness. There was no sign but the high-pitched scream which Howell turned down for comfort’s sake. Then, very gradually, the slug-ship settled to the ground. It vanished behind the trees whose thrust-aside branches and displaced trunks told of their destruction by the landing ship.
The drive-whine stopped. The slug-ship was aground. Howell led the way to the opposite side of the Marintha. The slug-ship might have outside microphones, so he opened the farther port with care to avoid noise. Then he stopped and went back to make sure that if he didn’t open the log-tape instrument itself, all the records of the ship’s journey to here from Earth would be destroyed. He didn’t believe there was real value in the precaution,but he could do no less than take it.
The four of them slipped out and to the ground. Howell had briefed them as if giving stage-directions. Ketch and Breen went around the Marintha’s stern, to make use of cover for the ambush Howell planned. Howell and Karen moved cautiously around the bow, If they were sighted, every shred of hope would vanish instantly. Therefore he had told the others to place themselves close to the yacht. The blasted-out craters might expose targets moving toward it. They should be in position well before a landing party from the slug-ship could arrive.
Howell and Karen ensconced themselves where a fallen tree trunk would be partial protection against any ordinary hand-weapon. Oddly enough, close to the ground they could see farther through the jungle than at normal eye-height. Howell scrunched himself down to take advantage of the fact.
He and Karen were alone again, but he was necessarily absorbed in this next-to-hopeless attempt to resist a fighting ship with sporting rifles. The attempt was so foolhardy that he couldn’t give it less than every atom of his attention. Yet he realized that even highly improbable success in this particular combat wouldn’t ensure their safety.
“There’s a consort of this ship listening in, somewhere a long way off,” he told Karen bitterly. “I hope we’ll do something for her to listen to!”
Then he repeated the advice he’d given Breen and Ketch about the proper time to fire—at the last instant before the slug-ship creatures moved to enter the yacht, so as many as possible could be fired on before they could flee. It did not occur to him, or to Karen, that a girl wasn’t supposed to fight. Against other humans, that convention would apply. But women hunted game on divers worlds. If their targets weren’t human ones, they felt no aversion. So Karen would feel no qualms about shooting at the creatures from the slug-ship. They weren’t specifically human, or even humanoid.
It seemed a horribly long time before there was any evidence on that subject, however. Things made bird-like noises, some among tree branches, some on the ground. Others made animal sounds. A very tiny creature rustled fallen leaves directly before Howell’s firing position.
Then, looking between jungle-stalks close to the ground, Howell saw movement. Things were coming from the landed ship. It was not possible to see them clearly, but assuredly they were not human. For moments Howell believed that they had enormous eyes, until he saw part of a moving shape more clearly and it was evident that what he saw were goggles. They would imply space-suits. The slug-ship creatures wore spacesuits! In atmosphere!
It meant that they couldn’t breathe the air that humans found quite satisfactory. Howell drew in his breath sharply. That was good fortune! It meant that any wound which involved the puncture of an alien’s space-suit would be a killing wound. It multiplied the chances of success in this ambush, provided Ketch and Breen maintained their delusion that this was an adventure like a drama-tape play in which all the heroic characters—themselves—were bound to arrive at a happy ending. Now Howell began to hope desperately that Ketch and Breen would have no time to develop qualms and acquire apprehensions, to become frightened. Because if they did—
They didn’t have time. There was a movement in the jungle. Then—a Thing appeared. It was neither much larger nor much smaller than a man. It wore a space-suit, which was like a mask in that it had all the implications of horror a mask evokes. Howell couldn’t make out what sort of creature the space-suit covered. It was flesh, however, and it carried something which could only be a weapon, and it moved with a writhing, insectile gait. It had limbs, of which one carried its weapon. It had a head which moved to point this way and that, in an insect-like fashion no familiar animal practised.