"Darla! Throw me your brolly, please. Hurry!"
She did, and I popped it open and put it up against the smoldering sky.
I walked slowly across the bridge, stopping momentarily to inspect one of the piers the roadbed had dropped down into the gully to carry its weight over. I didn't risk bending over very far, feeling stiff and top-heavy. I got no clue as to how trick had been done, and continued on across the bridge.
I was met by the black man. He was on the light-skinned side, tall, round-shouldered, very thin. A big, long-fingered hand enveloped mine.
"Hello! Decent of you to stop. Didn't think you would. I'm John Sukuma-Tayler." His accent was British, his manner ami able. After I told him my first name only, he said, "Awful place to have broken down. The heat's about done us in. Reminds me a bit too much of Africa. I lived in Europe most of my life, and liked it."
"Why did you leave?" I said, a little too bluntly. I was hot!
He took it as humor. "Sometimes I wonder!" He chuckled.
"Sorry. I didn't mean it the way it sounded."
"Don't fret about it. Some of our people are on the verge of biting each other's heads off. The heat's getting to all of us. We're in quite a pickle. Do you think we could prevail upon you to lend a hand?"
"Sure. What's up."
We began walking back to the bus, which was up on its service jacks, precariously so. The bus was an old clunker, but in its day it had been built for speed and taking sharp curve and had a ground-effect flange all the way around it, which made it difficult to get underneath. The built-in jacks were barely adequate, especially in this gravity. Anyone crawlingi under would be taking a chance of having several tons of low slung vehicle squat on his chest. To preclude this eventuality, several of the passengers were shoring up the edges of the flange near the jacks with plastic bags filled with earth. The dirt was being shoveled from a nearby conical mound, one of many that punctuated the plain. No large rocksLwere handy for the job. The work was progressing slowly.
"All I can tell you," Sukuma-Tayler said with a helpless spread of his arms, "is that it quit, just like that. Powered down and stopped, here in the middle of nowhere. A few of our people have some mechanical aptitude, but no one's really got a look yet. We tore out some seats and tried to get to the engine from the inside, but the bolts holding the shielding wouldn't budge, and we have no power tools."
'Too bad. That's how you get to the guts of this thing. Going underneath might not do you any good. But, it depends on what's ailing it."
"Thought as much. The engine monitoring readouts are still operative, but they don't say much. To me, that is."
"Let me take a look," I said. "While I'm at it, I'd suggest you get those sandbags out from under the GE flange and put them under the frame bracings. If she goes down, that flange will just crinkle."
The big man furrowed his brow. "You know, you're absolutely right." He shook his head wearily. "Ignorance is so handicapping! Especially with machines."
"Can be deadly, too." I dragged myself toward the hatch.
The verniers told me nothing, being little better than idiot lights. Nothing in the way of plasma diagnostic systems, even though the vehicle had been a commercial carrier.
Sukuma-Tayler eased his lanky frame inside and sat next tome.
"Anything?" he asked hopefully.
"No, not much. It looks like you have full power going through the radio-frequency breakdown stage, but other than that, I can't tell anything from these readouts. Does she turn over?"
"Yes, but the engine just won't catch."
"Uh-huh. Well, that could be anything. If it's loss of plasma confinement, that could be pretty hairy. I couldn't do anything here."
"I was afraid of that," Sukuma-Tayler said ruefully.
"You're lucky in one sense. These old vans are among the few Earth-built buggies still on Skyway. My rig's alien-manufactured, but built to Terran specifications and design, so I'm fairly familiar with this kind of hardware. However, I'm really not a mechanic. It takes an expert."
"Anything you can do, Jake, would be appreciated."
"Well, I'll give it a try." I mopped my brow with an already damp sleeve. "I can't remember, though, whether these old buses use an occluded-gas ion source. If so, you need a pinch of titanium in with the fuel. Otherwise, you get neutral particles flying all over the place between pulses. I forget whether they do or not. What kind of fuel are you using?"
"High-test. Deuterium-tritium."
"Yeah, I thought so. My rig runs on double deuce. Newer design."
"Ah."
"When did you fill up last?"
The Afro scratched his beard. "You know, I really can't remember. These things run forever, it seems."
Continuing my train of thought, I got out my circuit-test gauge. "Got a screwdriver?"
Sukuma-Tayler yelled for a screwdriver, and one of the passengers, a young Oriental man, brought him one. I took it and unbolted the instrument panel, slid it out, and looked for the fuel readout leads. I found them and tested them. Of course.
"I found your problem," I said, pushing the panel back. Naturally, it didn't want to fit back the way it had been. I shoved, got nowhere.
"You did?" He was shocked and relieved.
"Yeah. You're out of fuel."
"What! You're joking."
"No. The fuel-level readout was shorted."
The big man slapped his forehead. "I'll be damned. After all that mucking about―" He leaned out the hatch and yelled, "People! Stop what you're doing. Our friend here has exposed us as the fools that we are." He turned back to me. "So sorry to have troubled you, old man. What classic boneheadedness!"
"It can… uhhh!… happen to anybody. Gimme a hand with this, will you?" '
We shoved the panel back in. The screwholes, contrary negative entities that they are, did not line up. I handed him the screws, and he looked at them blankly.
"I was meaning to ask," I said offhandedly. "Are you some sort of religious group?"
He beamed. "Yes! We're Teleologists. Church of Teleological Pantheism. You've heard of us?"
A man with pride in his faith is to be admired. "No."
"Uh. Well, that's what we are, and we're supposed to be settling this planet. We were en. route to Maxwellville."
We stepped outside. There were about seven people in the party besides the Afro, whom I presumed to be the leader. Four of them were women, and all were of various races. I took one man for an Australian Abo. "Not many of you for a colony, are you?"
"We're an advance party. More will be following shortly. We're branching off from a community on Khadija, and eventually we hope to siphon everybody there to Goliath. Our presence on Khadija is… well, resented."
"I see. You plan to homestead?"
"We hope to," Sukuma-Tayler told me as we watched his people unstack the sandbags and empty them. "Actually, we have a land grant from the―"
Yelling from the direction of the conical mound interrupted him. We turned and looked. One man who had been shoveling dirt was down on the ground not far from the mound. He was struggling with something that apparently had gotten hold of him. His partner was beating whatever it was with a shovel. We rushed ― I gimped ― over to them.
The thing was a half-meter-long segmented animal with what looked like a shiny metallic carapace. It had crablike claws, but there were more than two pincers on each. The three elements were positioned for grasping. The beastie had the screaming man's ankle in a tight grip. Even more startling was the sight of the animal hefting a shiny, sharp blade in the other claw, using it to jab its victim's calf with rapid, vicious up-and-down strokes. The man with the shovel gave up whacking the thing with the flat of the spade and used the edge like a chopper. After several strokes, he cut the creature in two. The front half fought on. Several people had run up, and we all made a grab for it at once. We tore the thing apart like a boiled lobster. I saw another man, the Abo, come away with the blade-wielding forelimb, at the price of an oozing crimson slash across his palm.