The picture was grainy, snowy as hell, but the scene clearly showed a small camp. Something just didn't look right.
Brazil parked the ship in a synchronous orbit and prepared to go down and see what was wrong. But first, he flipped on the intercom again.
"I'm afraid I'll have to seal you aft," he told his passengers. "I have to check out something down on the planet. If I don't return within eight standard hours, the ship will automatically pull out and take you to Coriolanus at top speed, so you needn't be worried."
"Can I come with you?" Vardia's voice came back at him.
He chuckled. "No, sorry, regulations and all that. You'll be in contact with me through this intercom all the time, so you'll know what's going on."
He suited up, reflecting that he hadn't been in one of the things in years. Then he entered the small bay below the engine well through a hatch from the bridge and entered the little landing craft. Within five minutes, he was away.
The ship's computer took him to the spot by radio link, and he was at the scene in under an hour. He raised the canopy—the little craft had no air or pressurization of its own—and climbed down the side, striking the ground. The lighter gravity made him feel ten feet tall. The ship, of course, was kept at one gee for everybody's convenience.
He needed only a couple of minutes to survey the scene and to report his findings back to the ship's recorders as the passengers anxiously followed his every word. "It's a base camp," he told them, "like the kind used for scientific expeditions. Tent-type units, modular, pretty modern—seem to have exploded somehow. All of them." He knew that was impossible—and he knew they knew—but those were the facts all the same.
He was just wondering aloud as to what could have caused such a thing when he noticed the piled-up pressure suits near what would have been the exit lock. He went over to them and picked one up, curiously.
"The suits are outside the area—empty. As if somebody threw them there. The explosion or whatever couldn't have done it—not without some damage. Wait a minute, let me get over to the area of the dorms."
Vardia listened with growing fascination, and frustration that she could see none of it, nor ask questions.
"Yuk!'
came Brazil's voice over the intercom. "Pretty messy death. They died when the vacuum hit, if the explosion didn't get them. Hmmm. . . . Seven. I can't figure it out. The place is a mess but the explosion didn't really do more than rip the tents to shreds. But that was enough."
He moved over to another area that caught his eye.
"Funny," he said, "looks like somebody's done a job on the power plant. Well, here's what did it, anyway. Somebody jacked up the oxygen to pure and shut off the rest of the air. Just takes a spark after that. Worries me, though. There are two dozen safeguards against that sort of thing. Somebody had to do it deliberately."
The words sent a chill through all three passengers listening breathlessly to his account. Even Wu Julee seemed caught up in the drama.
"Well, I just counted the beds," Brazil told them, his voice keeping calm but tinged with the concern he felt. "A dorm room for five, another one with three, and a single—probably the project chief's. Bodies in all but the chief's and one of the fivesome. Hmmm. . . . There were seven pressure suits. Should have been nine."
They heard him breathing and moving around, but he was infuriatingly silent for the longest period.
Finally he said, "Two flyers are gone, so the missing ones must be somewhere else on the planet. It's a sure bet that one of them, at least, killed the others."
Again the long silence, punctuated only with breathing sounds. All aboard the freighter were holding their breaths. It took no imagination at all to figure out that one, maybe two, madmen were loose on that planet—and Brazil was alone.
"Now here's the strangest part," the captain reported at last. They strained for every word, cursing him for his maddening conversational tone. "I've gotten to the rescue signal. It's about a kilometer from the camp, on a low ridge. But it isn't turned on."
It was almost two hours more before Nathan Brazil was back aboard the ship. He didn't get out of his suit, although he left the helmet on his chair while he checked the computer. It assured him once again that it was indeed receiving a distress signal from the beacon below.
Only Brazil knew that it wasn't.
It just wasn't possible.
He unlocked the aft compartment and made his way back to the passengers, all of whom were seated in the lounge.
"So what do you make of it, Captain?" Hain asked seriously.
"Well," replied the other hesitantly, "I'm about to start believing in ghosts.
That signal isn't on.
To make sure, I disabled it completely before coming back. But it's still coming in loud and strong up here."
"There must be another signal," Vardia suggested logically.
"No, there isn't. Not only is one the standard issue—and everything else there is standard issue—but a computer that can plot a course in deep space through the underdimensions and get you to a particular port on a particular planet in the middle of nowhere doesn't screw up in plotting the coordinates of a distress signal."
"Let's proceed on what we
do
know, then," Hain suggested. "We know that there
is
a signal—no, no, let me finish!" he protested as Brazil was about to cut in. "As I said, there
is
a signal. It was set or sent by someone who, presumably, is one or both of the people who survived the—ah, disaster. Someone—or something—wants us to come down, wanted us to find the wrecked station, wants
something."
"A malevolent alien civilization, Hain?" Brazil retorted skeptically. "Come on. We've got—what?—a thousand, give or take, solar systems explored to date, with more every year. We've found remains of the Markovians—one of their cities is near the camp, probably what the group was investigating—and lots and lots of animal and plant life. But no living, present-day alien civilizations."
"But we've done only a trifle!" Hain protested. "There are a billion billion stars around. You know the odds."
"But not here, inside our perimeter," the captain pointed out.
"But, he
is
right, you know," Vardia interjected. "Perhaps someone—or something—discovered
us."
"No," Brazil told them, "it's not that. There is some simple explanation. What happened down there was cold-blooded human murder by one of the team. For what madness, I can't guess. They can't get off the planet with what they've got. If they don't starve to death first, their pickup ship will get them."
"You mean you aren't going to try to find them?" Vardia asked. "But you must! Otherwise some other ship might answer them and the killers might be able to overpower them before they are forewarned!"
"Oh, the odds against anyone else hearing that signal are astronomical," Brazil replied patiently.
"I assure you," Hain said flatly, "that the last thing I wish to do is stalk a murderer on an unknown world. Nevertheless, Citizen Vardia is correct. If we found them, someone else might."
Brazil's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Can
you
handle a pistol?" he asked the fat man. "Can you?" he asked Vardia.
"I can," Hain replied evenly, "and have."
"That is left to the military caste," Vardia replied, "but I am an expert with the sword, and I have a ceremonial one with me. It will puncture a pressure suit."
Brazil almost laughed. "A sword? You?"
She ran to her room and came back with a gleaming, handsome blade that glittered as if it were made of the finest silver. "It builds quick reflexes and good muscles," she explained. "Also, for some reason the sword is traditional in our service."
Brazil's face grew serious again. "And what about Wu Julee?" he asked, not of her but of Hain.
"She goes where I go," Hain replied cautiously. "And she will, in a pinch, help protect us with her life."
I'll bet, Brazil thought sourly. You, anyway.
* * *
There was never any problem of pressure suits; they expanded or contracted to fit almost any known human wearer, although Hain's did give him a little problem. Each of them had worn one before, at least in the practice drill before the ship left port. They were extremely light, and, once the helmet had been set into place and the seal activated, a person hardly knew he had it on. Air was recirculated and refined through two small, light filters on the side of the helmet. The supply would last for almost a day. In an emergency situation, the lifeboat could recharge the air supply for fifteen people for a month, so there was plenty of air to spare.
Brazil led them first to the distress beacon, if only to prove to himself that he was correct. They examined it carefully, and agreed that there was no way it could be sending.
But the little lifeboat monitor connection to the mother ship still said it was.
So they climbed back in and sped northward, the mystery so pressing on them that they barely noted the Markovian ruins near the camp and along the route. The ship's computer had located the two missing shuttlecraft on a plain near the north pole, and that seemed the next likely place to investigate. If anyone was left alive, he would be there.
"Why do you think they are up there?" Vardia asked Brazil.
"My theory is that the murderer couldn't trap one of them in the base camp and that that one took a shuttle and flew off.
There must have been a chase, and that plain is where they met up," the captain replied. "We'll know in a little while, because we're almost there."
Being in a lifeboat with a major spatial propulsion unit, Brazil was able to make the long trip by going back up into orbit and braking back down again. Thus, the nine-hour journey was reduced to just a little over ninety minutes. He braked to the slowest speed he could maintain as they cleared a last mountain range and came upon a broad, flat plain.
"There they are!" Vardia almost shouted, and they all looked ahead at the two craft, small silver disks in the twilight, shown prominently at the edge of a slight discoloration in the plain.
Brazil circled around the spot several times.
"I can see no one," Hain reported. "Not a sign of life, not a pressure suit, nothing. They may still be in the craft," he suggested.
"Okay," Brazil replied, "I'll set down a few hundred meters from them. Hain, you stay back just outside this boat and cover me. The other two of you stay inside. If anything happens to us, the mother ship will reclaim the boat."
There was a soft bump, and they were down on the surface of Dalgonia. Brazil reached into the broad, black belt he wore on the outside of his pressure suit and removed one of two pistols and handed it to Hain.
The pistols didn't look like much, but they could fire short pulses of energy at rates from one per second to five hundred per second, the latter not doing much for aim but able to spread things enough to knock off a small regiment. There was a
stun
setting that would paralyze a man for a half hour or more, but both men placed their weapons on
full.
There were seven ugly bodies far to the south.
Brazil eased out of the hatch in the eerie silence of a near vacuum, and, keeping the two shuttlecraft always in view, moved to cover behind the lifeboat. That was a relatively safe haven. Since the boat had been built to take a tremendous amount of stress and even friction, it would be impervious to any weapons likely to be in the hands of their quarry.
Hain emerged shortly after, having more trouble climbing down with his bulk despite the weak gravity. He chose a position just forward of the nose where he was mostly sheltered but could still use the edge of the boat to steady his pistol.
Brazil, satisfied, moved cautiously forward.
He reached the nearest craft in less than two minutes. "No sign of life yet," he told them. "I'm going to climb up on top and have a look inside." He mounted the rail-type ladder along the side of the shuttle and walked over to the entry hatch.
"Still nothing," Brazil reported. "I'm going in."
It took only another three minutes to get inside and find nobody home. He then repeated the sequence with the second craft and found it empty too, although this one showed signs that somebody had spent many hours there.
"Come on up, anybody," he called. "There's no one here, or for many kilometers around. See what you make of it."
Hain told Wu Julee to join him. Vardia climbed out last, and they all went over to the captain, who was standing near the second shuttle and looking anxiously at the ground. Brazil noted with some amusement that Vardia clutched her nice, pretty sword.
"Look at the ground here," he said, pointing to the tracks of a person in a pressure suit coming up to a point at which the dust around was greatly disturbed for a large area.
"What do you make of it, Captain?" Hain asked.
"Well, it looks as if my theory's right, anyway. See—the first one was here, then saw the second one land, and he hid out on the back of the shuttle. When the pursuer—the guy who landed second I assume was the murderer—found nobody home, he walked around to here"—Brazil gestured at the mottled dust thrown about—"and was jumped by the first person from on top. They fought here, then one took off across the plain, the other in pursuit. See how we get only the toe tracks coming out of the fight scene?"
Vardia was already following the tracks out onto the plain. Suddenly she stopped short and stared, incredulous, at the ground. "Captain! Everyone! Came here!" she called urgently. They rushed up to her. She was pointing at the ground immediately ahead of her.
The fine dust was thinner here, and the rock changed color from a dull orange to more of a gray, but at first they didn't see what she meant. Brazil went over and stooped down. Then it sank in on him.
At the place where one man had stepped, just where the two strains of rock met, there was half a footprint. Not the running type—it was angled, so that a little less than half of a grown man's footprint, pressure suit pattern and all, was visible in the orange. Where it met the gray, there was unbroken dust.