Murray Leinster (Duke Classic SiFi) (17 page)

"I wish we had a helicopter," Cochrane repeated. "The look of the
mountains as we came down, with glaciers between the smoking cones—that
was good show-stuff! We could have held interest here until we worked
that naming contest. We could use the extra capital that would bring in!
As it is, we've got to move on with practically nothing accomplished.
The trouble is that I didn't think we would succeed as we have! Heaven
knows I could have gotten helicopters!"

He helped her up a small steep incline, where rock protruded from a
hillside.

The ground trembled again. Not alarmingly, but Babs' hold of his hand
tightened a little. They continued to climb. They came out atop a small
bare prominence which rose above the forest. Here they could see over
the treetops in a truly extensive view. The mountains all about were
clearly visible. Some were ten and some twenty miles away. Some, still
farther, were barely visible in the thin haze of distance. But there was
a thick pall of smoke hovering about one of the farthest. It was
mushroom-shaped. At one time in human history, it would have seemed
typically a volcanic cloud. To Cochrane and Babs, it was typically the
cloud of an atomic explosion.

The ground shook sharply underfoot. Babs staggered.

Flying things rose from the forests in swarms. They hovered and darted
and flapped above the tree-tops. Temblors did not alarm the creatures of
the valley. But ground-shocks like this last were another matter.

A great tree, rearing above its fellows, toppled slowly. With ripping,
tearing noises, it bent sedately toward the smoking, far-away mountain.
It crashed thunderously down upon smaller trees. There were other
rending noises. The flying things rose higher, seeming agitated. Echoes
sounded in the ears of the two atop the hill.

There was another sharp shock. Babs gave a little, inarticulate cry. She
pointed.

There was much smoke in the distance. Over the far-away cone, which was
indistinct in the smoke of its own making—over the edge of the distant
mountains a glare appeared. It was a thin line of bright white light.
With infinite deliberation it began to creep down the slanting,
blessedly remote mountainside.

The ground seemed to shift abruptly, and then shift back. Across and
down the valley, five miles away, a portion of the stony wall detached
itself and slid downward in seeming slow motion. Two more great trees
made ripping sounds. One crashed. There was an enormous darkness above
one part of the sky. Its under side glowed from fires as of hell, in the
crater beneath it. There were sparkings above the mountaintop.

Very oddly indeed, the sky overhead was peacefully blue. But at the
horizon a sheet of fire rolled down mile-long slopes. It seemed to move
with infinite deliberation, but to move visibly at such a distance it
must have been traveling like an express-train. It must have been
unthinkably hot, glaring-white molten stone, thin as water, pouring
downward in a flood of fire.

There was no longer a sensation of the ground trembling underfoot. Now
the noticeable sensation was when the ground was still. Temblors were
practically continuous. There were distinct sharp impacts, as of violent
blows nearby.

Babs stared, fascinated. She glanced up at Cochrane. His skin was white.
There were beads of sweat on his forehead.

"We're safe here, aren't we?" she asked, scared.

"I think so. But I'm not going to take you through falling trees while
this is going on! There's another tree down! I'm worrying about the
ship! If it topples—."

She looked at the nose of the space-ship, gleaming silver metal, rising
from the trees about the landing-spot it had burned clear. A third of
its length was visible.

"If it topples," said Cochrane, "we'll never be able to take off. It has
to point up to lift."

Babs looked from the ship to him, and back again. Then her eyes went
fearfully to the remote mountain. Rumblings came from it now. They were
not loud. They were hardly more than dull growlings, at the lower limit
of audible pitch. They were like faint and distant thunder. There were
flashings like lightning in the cloud which now enveloped the mountain's
top.

Cochrane made an indescribable small sound. He stared at the ship. As
explosion-waves passed over the ground, a faint, unanimous movement of
the treetops became visible. It seemed to Cochrane that the space-ship
wavered as if about to fall from its upright position.

It was not designed to stand such violence as a fall would imply. Its
hull would be dented or rent. It was at least possible that its
fuel-store would detonate. But even if its fall were checked by
still-standing trees about it, it could never take off again. The eight
humans of its company could never juggle it back to a vertical position.
Rocket-thrust would merely push it in the direction its nose pointed.
Toppled, its rocket-thrust would merely shove it blindly over stones and
trees and to destruction.

The ship swayed again. Visibly. Ground-waves made its weight have the
effect of blows. Part of its foundation rested on almost-visible stone,
only feet below the ground-level. But one of the landing-fins rested on
humus. As the shocks passed, that fin-foot sank into the soft soil. The
space-ship leaned perceptibly.

Flying creatures darted back and forth above the tree-tops. Miles away,
insensate violence reigned. Clouds of dust and smoke shot miles into the
air, and half a mountainside glowed white-hot, and there was the sound
of long-continued thunder, and the ground shook and quivered....

There were movements nearby. A creature with yellow fur and the shape of
a bear with huge ears came padding out of the forest. It swarmed up the
bare stone of the hill on which Babs and Cochrane stood.

It ignored them. Halfway up the unwooded part of the hill, it stopped
and made plaintive, high-pitched noises. Other creatures came. Many had
come while the man and girl were too absorbed to notice. Now two more of
the large animals came out into the open and climbed the hill.

Babs said shakily:

"Do you—think they'll—do you think—"

There was a nearer roaring. The space-ship leaned, and leaned....
Cochrane's lips tensed.

The space-ship's rockets bellowed and a storm of hurtling smoke flashed
up around it. It lifted, staggering as its steering-jets tried
frantically to swing its lower parts underneath its mass. It lurched
violently, and the rockets flamed terribly. It lifted again. Its tail
was higher than the trees, but it did not point straight up. It surged
horribly across the top of the forest, leaving a vast flash of flaming
vegetation behind it. Then it steadied, and aimed skyward and
climbed....

Then it was not. Obviously the Dabney field booster had been flashed on
to get the ship out to space. The ship had vanished into emptiness.

The Dabney field had flicked it some hundred and seventy-odd light-years
from Earth's moon in the flicker of a heart-beat. It might have gone
that far again. Whoever was in it had had no choice but to take off, and
no way to take off without suicidal use of fuel in any other way.

Cochrane looked at where the ship had vanished. Seconds passed. There
came the thunderclap of air closing the vacuum the ship's disappearance
had left.

There were squealings behind the pair on the hilltop. Eight of the huge
yellow beasts were out in the open, now. Tiny, furry biped animals
waddled desperately to get out of their way. Smaller creatures scuttled
here and there. A sinuous creature with fur but no apparent legs writhed
its way upward. But all the creatures were frightened. They observed an
absolute truce, under the overmastering greater fear of nature.

Far away, the volcano on the skyline boomed and flashed and emitted
monstrous clouds of smoke. The shining, incandescent lava on its flanks
glared across the glaciers.

Babs gasped suddenly. She realized the situation in which she and
Cochrane had been left.

Shivering, she pressed close to him as the distant black smoke-cloud
spread toward the center of the sky.

Before sunset, they reached the area of ashes where the ship had stood.
Cochrane was sure that if anybody else had been left behind besides
themselves, the landing-place was an inevitable rendezvous. Only three
members of the ship's company had been inside when Babs and Cochrane
left to stroll for the two hours astronomers on Earth had set as a
waiting-period. Jones had been in the ship, and Holden, and Alicia
Simms. Everybody else had been exploring. Their attitude had been
exactly that of sight-seers and tourists. But they could have gotten
back before the take-off.

Apparently they had. Nobody seemed to have returned to the burned-over
space since the ship's departure. The blast of the rockets had erased
all previous tracks, but still there was a thin layer of ash resettled
over the clearing. Footprints would have been visible in it. Anybody
remaining would have come here. Nobody had. Babs and Cochrane were left
alone.

There were still temblors, but the sharper shocks no longer came. There
was conflagration in the wood, where the lurching ship had left a long
fresh streak of forest-fire. The two castaways stared at the round,
empty landing-place. Overhead, the blue sky turned yellow—but where the
smoke from the eruption rose, the sky early became a brownish red—and
presently the yellow faded to gold. Unburned green foliage all about was
singularly beautiful in that golden glow. But it was more beautiful
still as the sky turned rose-pink and then carmine in turn, and then
crimson from one horizon to the other save where the volcanic
smoke-cloud marred the color. Then the east darkened, and became a red
so deep as to be practically black, and unfamiliar bright stars began to
peep through it.

Before darkness was complete, Cochrane dragged burning branches from the
edge of the new fire—the heat was searing—and built a new and smaller
fire in the place where the ship had been.

"This isn't for warmth," he explained briefly, "but so we'll have light
if we need it. And it isn't likely that animals will be anything but
afraid of it."

He went off to drag charred masses of burnable stuff from the burned-out
first forest fire. He built a sort of rampart in the very center of the
clearing. He brought great heaps of scorched wood. He did not know how
much was needed to keep the fire going until dawn.

When he finished, Babs was silently at work trying to find out how to
keep the fire going. The burning parts had to be kept together. One
branch, burning alone, died out. Two red-hot brands in contact kept each
other alight.

"I'm sorry we haven't anything to eat," Cochrane told her.

"I'm not hungry," she assured him. "What are we going to do now?"

"There's nothing to do until morning." Unconsciously, Cochrane looked
grim. "Then there'll be plenty. Food, for one thing. We don't know,
actually, whether or not there's anything really edible on this
planet—for us. It could be that there are fruits or possibly stalks or
leaves that would be nourishing. Only—we don't know which is which. We
have to be careful. We might pick something like poison ivy!"

Babs said:

"But the ship will come back!"

"Of course," agreed Cochrane. "But it may take them some time to find
us. This is a pretty big planet, you know."

He estimated his supply of burnable stuff. He improved the rampart he
had made at first. Babs stared at him. After four or five minutes he
stepped back.

"You can lean against this," he explained. "You can watch the fire quite
comfortably. And it's a sort of wall. The fire will light one side of
you and the wall will feel comforting behind you when you get sleepy."

Babs nodded. She swallowed.

"I—think I see what you mean when you say they may have trouble finding
us, because this planet is so large."

Cochrane nodded reluctantly.

"Of course there's this burned-off space for a marker," he observed
cheerfully. "But it could take several days for them to see it."

Babs swallowed again. She said carefully:

"The—ship can't hover like a helicopter, to search. You said so. It
doesn't have fuel enough. They can't really search for us at all! The
only way to make a real search would be to go back to Earth and—bring
back helicopters and fuel for them and men to fly them.... Isn't that
right?"

"Not necessarily. But we do have to figure on a matter of—well—two or
three days as a possibility."

Babs moistened her lips and he said quickly:

"I did a show once about some miners lost in a wilderness. A period
show. In it, they knew that part of their food was poisoned. They didn't
know what. They had to have all their food. And of course they didn't
have laboratories with which to test for poison."

Babs eyed him oddly.

"They bandaged their arms," said Cochrane, "and put scraps of the
different foodstuffs under the bandages. The one that was poisonous
showed. It affected the skin. Like an allergy-test. I'll try that trick
in the morning when there's light to pick samples by. There are berries
and stuff. There must be fruits. A few hours should test them."

Babs said without intonation:

"And we can watch what the animals eat."

Cochrane nodded gravely. Animals on Earth can live on things that—to
put it mildly—humans do not find satisfying. Grass, for example. But it
was good for Babs to think of cheering things right now. There would be
plenty of discouragement to contemplate later.

There was a flicker of brightness in the sky. Presently the earth
quivered. Something made a plaintive, "
waa-waa-waaaaa!
" sound off in
the night. Something else made a noise like the tinkling of bells. There
was an abstracted hooting presently, which now was nearby and now was
far away, and once they heard something which was exactly like the noise
of water running into a pool. But the source of that particular burbling
moved through the dark wood beyond the clearing.