Awe overrode the other's personal fear.
"And you can knock us all out like that?"
"With a man of greater self-control or strong will, it would be a harder task. Then they have to be tricked into dropping their mind guards. But Snyn had no guards up at all."
"That," Zinga said smoothly, "is not going to be your way out of this, Smitt. If you are planning to have the sergeant go around and drop all the opposition in their tracks you can just forget it. We will either reason it out with them or — "
But Smitt was already aware of the next point. "We fight?" he asked almost grimly. "But that will be — "
"Mutiny? Of course, my dear sir. However, if you had not had that in your mind all along you would not have come to us, would you?" Fylh demanded.
Mutiny! Kartr made himself consider it calmly. In space or on planet Vibor was the Commander of the Starfire. And every man aboard had once sworn an oath to obey his orders and uphold the authority of the Service. Tork, realizing the officer's condition, might have removed Vibor. But Tork was gone and not one man aboard the ship now had the legal right to set aside the Commander's orders. The sergeant got to his feet.
"Can you get Jaksan and Dalgre — "
He looked about the rangers' quarters. No, it would be wiser to hold a meeting in some more neutral place. Outside, he decided swiftly, where the psychological effect of the ruined ship right before their eyes all during the discussion might well be the deciding point.
"Outside?" he ended.
"All right," agreed Smitt, but there was a note of reluctance in that. He went out.
"Now," Zinga asked, after watching the com-techneer safely out of hearing range, "what are we in for?"
"This would have come sooner or later anyway — it was inevitable after the crash." That was Rolth's soft voice answering. "When we were space borne, they had a reason for life — they could close their eyes and minds to things, drugging themselves with a round of familiar duties. Now that has been swept away from them. We are the ones who have a purpose — a job. And because we are — different — we have always been slightly suspect — "
"So," Kartr put into words the thought which had been growing in his own mind, "unless we act and give them something to work for, we may become the target for their fear and resentment? I agree."
"We could cut loose," Fylh suggested. "When the ship crashed our ties with her were broken. Records — who's ever going to see any of our records now? We're able to live off the land — "
"But they might not be able to," Kartr pointed out. "And it is just because that is true that we can't cut loose and go. Not now anyway. We shall have to try and help them — "
Zinga laughed. "Always the idealist, Kartr. I'm a Bemmy, Fylh's a Bemmy, Rolth's half Bemmy and you're a Bemmy lover and we're all rangers, which in no way endears any of us to these so-called human Patrolmen. All right, we'll try to make them see the light. But I'll do my arguing with a blaster near my hand."
Kartr did not demur. After the resentment with which Jaksan had greeted him when they returned from the trip and the insane attack of Snyn, he knew enough to understand that such preparedness on their part was necessary.
"Do we count on Smitt, I wonder," Zinga mused. "He never before impressed me as a ranger recruit."
"No, but he does have brains," Rolth pointed out. "Kartr" — he turned to the sergeant — "it will be your play — we'll let you do the talking now."
The other two nodded. Kartr smiled. Inside him was a good warm feeling. He had known it before — the rangers stood together. Come what might, they were going to present a united front to danger.
4. Beacon
Together the four rangers crossed the ground burnt off by the ship's drive to stand partially in the shadow of a tall rock outcrop. The sun was far down now — sending red and yellow spears of light up the western sky. But its day heat still radiated from both sand and stone.
Jaksan, Dalgre and Smitt awaited them, eyes narrowed against the light reflected from the metal of the Starfire — standing close together as if they were expecting — what? Attack? There were grim lines about the mouth of the arms officer. He was middle-aged, but always before there had been an elasticity in his movements, an alertness in his voice and manner which had given the lie to the broad sweeps of gray hair showing on his temples. In the golden days of the Service, Kartr realized with a slight shock of surprise, Jaksan would not have been in space at all. Long since, regulations would have retired him to some administrative post in one of the fleet ports. Did the Patrol still have any such ports? Kartr himself had not earthed in one for at least five years now.
"Well, what do you want with us?" Jaksan took the initiative.
But Kartr refused to be in any way impressed or intimidated. "It is necessary" — by instinct he fell back into the formal speech he had heard in his childhood — "for us to consider now the future. Look at the ship — " He did not need to wave his hand toward that shattered bulk. They had, none of them, been able to keep their eyes away from it. "Can you truly think that it shall ever lift again? We began this last flight undersupplied. And those supplies we have drawn upon now for months — they must be almost gone. There remains but one thing for us to do — we must strip the ship and establish a camp on the land — "
"That is just the sort of yap we expected to hear out of you!" snapped Dalgre. "You are still under orders — whether we have crashed or not!"
But it wasn't Jaksan who had made the hot retort. Jaksan was steeped, buried in the Patrol, in orders, in tradition — but he was not blinded or deafened by it.
"Whose orders?" asked Kartr now. "The Commander is incapacitated. Are you in command now, sir?" He addressed Jaksan directly.
The arms officer's space-burned skin could not pale, but his face was drawn and old. His lips drew back from his teeth in an animal's snarl of rage, pain and frustration. Before he answered he stared again at the broken ship.
"This will kill Vibor — " He bit out the words one by one.
Kartr braced himself as the wild emotion of the other tore at his perceptive sense. He could still Jaksan's pain by joining the other — by refusing to believe that the old life was ended and gone. Perhaps the Service had warped them all, the rangers as well as the crew, perhaps they needed the reassurance of orders, of routine — even going through the forms might be an anchor now.
The sergeant saluted. "Have I your permission to prepare to abandon ship, sir?"
For a moment he tensed as Jaksan whirled upon him. But the arms officer did not reach for a blaster. Instead his shoulders hunched, the lines in his face deepened into gashes of pain.
"Do as you please!" Then he strode away from them, behind the rocks and no one moved to follow him.
Kartr took command. "Zinga, Rolth, get out the sled and two days' supplies. Raid the main drive for fuel. Then go up and establish a base below the falls. You bring the sled back, Rolth, and we'll send along the Commander and Mirion — "
They ate an unpalatable meal of rations, and went to work. Some time later Jaksan was back among them to labor doggedly without speech. Kartr thankfully surrendered to him the responsibility of gathering the arms and the crew's supplies. The rangers kept away from the crewmen — there was plenty to do in stripping their own quarters and breaking out all the exploring gear the Starfire had ever carried. Piloted by Rolth, to whom the darkness was as bright as day, the sled made three trips during the night, taking the injured and the still unconscious Snyn as well as supplies of salvage.
A moon, a single one, rose to hang in the night sky. They were glad of its light to eke out the short line of their small portable lamps. They worked, with brief periods of rest, until the gray of dawn made a rim about the desert. It was in that last hour of labor that Jaksan made the most promising find. He had crawled alone into the crushed drive room and then shouted loud enough to bring them, numb with fatigue, hurrying to him.