Sargasso of Space (Solar Queen Series) (10 page)

But to the astonishment of Dane and the surprise of Wilcox—judging by his expression—the machine did not come to a stop at the level space before the tent. Instead it changed course to evade the bubble and kept steadily on until Wilcox halted it. The astrogator stared at the tent and then his voice whispered in Dane’s ear-phones :

“Come on in—but take it slow!”

They converged on the bubble, slipping from cover and racing across the clearing to new protections. But the tent might be deserted for all the attention their actions aroused. Mura reached the structure first, his sensitive fingers searching for the sealing catch. When the flap peeled down, all of them stared in.

The bubble was only an empty shell. None of its interior partitions had been put into place, even the tilo-floor was missing, so that bare rubble of the field showed. And there was not a box or bag of all the supplies which had been brought from the
Queen
present in that wide space.

“A fake!” Kosti sputtered. “This was set up just to make us think——”

“That they were still here,” Wilcox finished for him. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“Passing over here in a flitter,” Rip murmured, “we’d believe everything was just as it should be. But where
are
they?”

Mura resealed the bubble’s flap. “Not here,” he announced as if that were a new discovery. “But, Mr. Wilcox, did not the crawler attempt to proceed past this area? Perhaps it knows far more than we have given it credit for——”

Wilcox fingered the throat strap of his helmet. About them the fog was fading—though far more slowly than it had descended. His eyes went from the bubble to the mist beyond. Perhaps if Ali had not been involved he would have ordered a return to the
Queen.
But now, after a pause, he switched on the crawler’s motor once more.

The machine circled around the bubble and kept on. There were clumps of vegetation appearing now—the tough grass, the stunted bushes. And knots of rock slanting up signaled their approach to the foothills.

Here the fog which was thinning on the plains curdled again, shutting down until they bunched about the crawler in a tight cluster, each man within arms-distance of his fellows.

That feeling of being spied upon, of being dogged by something they could not see grew strong once more. Under foot the ground became rougher. But Kosti pointed out other tracks, rutted in the soft patches of soil, indications that they were on a road the crawler had used before.

As the mist thickened they strained ears and eyes—but they saw nothing but each other and their machine guide. And what they heard they could not believe.

“Look out!” Rip grabbed at Dane, jerking him back just in time to avoid a painful meeting with a rock wall which, loomed out of the fog. From the echo of their boots on the ground they gained the impression that they were entering a narrow defile. Linking hands they spread out—to discover that the four of them marching at arms-length could span the road they now followed.

Once more Wilcox slowed to a halt. He was uneasy. Marching blind this way, they could walk into a trap. On the other hand those they hunted must believe that the crew of the
Queen
would not attempt to travel through the fog. The astrogator had to weigh the possibility of a surprise descent upon the unseen enemy against the chance that he was going into an ambush.

And being imbued with that extra amount of caution which made him an excellent astrogator, Wilcox was not given to snap decisions. Those with him knew that no argument could move him once his mind had been made up. Therefore they sighed with relief when he started the crawler once more.

But the strange solution to their chase came so shortly that it was a shock. For, within feet, they were fronted by towering rock, rock against which the crawler stubbed its flat nose, as its treads continued to bite into the ground as if to force it into the solid, unmoving stone.

10
   
THE WRECK

“S
HE’S TRYING
to dig into
that?”
Kosti marveled.

Wilcox snapped out of his surprise and turned off the motor so that the crawler stopped heaving, nuzzling the rock wall through which its “memory” urged it.

“They must have put a false set of co-ordinates on purpose,” suggested Rip.

But Dane, remembering that earlier trail which had ended in the same fashion, stepped around Shannon and pressed his palms against the slimy, wet surface of the rock. He was right!

Fainter than it had been in that other valley, the vibration crept up his arms into his body. Not only that, but it was building up, growing in strength even as he stood there. He could feel it now in the ground, striking through the soles of his boots. And the others caught it too.

“What in the—!” exploded Wilcox who hitched forward on the crawler to copy the experiment. “This stuff must be hollow—that installation Tang talked about—”

That was it, of course, the installation which the comtech was sure must rival Terra’s largest computer, was broadcasting—not only in the sound waves picked up on the
Queen
, but through the stuff of Limbo itself! But what was that vast power being used for and why? And what was the trick which could send a crawler through solid rock? For Dane did not agree with Rip that the radar guide had been tampered with. If that had been done it would have been more sensible to set it on a point far out in the barrens, leading any would-be trackers into the midst of nowhere.

“There’s a trick in this—” Wilcox muttered as he moved his hand with patting motions across the stone.

But Dane was sure that the astrogator was not going to spring any hidden latch that way. His own examination of that other wall in the bright light of day had taught him the futility of such a hunt.

Kosti leaned against one of the caterpillar treads of the crawler. “If it went through there once, it isn’t going to do it now. We don’t know how to open the right door. A stick of thorlite might just get us in.”

“Now that’s a course I
can
compute, man” Rip hunkered down, running his hands along the ground line of that exasperating cliff. “How big a stick would do it, do you think?”

But Wilcox shook his head. “You don’t lift a ship without co-ordinates. Here,” he swung to Kosti, “link com-units with me and let’s see if with double power we can raise the
Queen
.”

The jetman unhooked the energy core of his helmet com and joined it to Wilcox’s in an emergency linkage.

“The installation is picking up voltage,” Dane warned, judging by the vibration singing through his finger tips. “Do you think you can break through the interference, sir?”

“That’s a thought.” Wilcox pulled at his mike. “But they’ve never been on steady. We can wait for a break in their broadcast.”

Rip and Mura came back to the wall. The vibration was a steady beat. Dane walked along to the right. He found a corner where the narrow valley went on—masked by the fog. And he was sure that as he shuffled along, his hand against the stone as a guide, that beat grew stronger. Could one by the sense of touch trace the installation? That was something to think about. What if they unfastened the ropes which had linked them to the crawler and made one long cord of them—an anchorage for a man to explore northeast? He retraced his path and reported to Wilcox, adding his suggestion.

“We’ll see what the Captain says,” was the astrogator’s answer.

The chill which was a part of the fog struck into them now that they were halted. Dane wondered how long Wilcox proposed to linger there. But through their touch on the wall they became aware that the beat of that distant discharge or energy was lessening, that one of the silent intervals was at hand. Wilcox, his fingers on the wall, adjusted the mike with his other hand, determined to make contact the first instant that he could.

And when all but the faintest rumble was gone from the rock, he spoke swiftly in the verbal short-hand of the Traders. Their discoveries among the ruins were reported, as was the present impasse.

There followed an anxious wait. They might be out of range of the
Queen
, even using the stepped-up com, But at last, through the crackle of static, their orders reached them—to make a short exploration along the valley if they wished. But to start back to the ship within the hour.

Wilcox was helped from the crawler before they manhandled the unwieldy vehicle around and re-set its dial for the return journey. Then they tied the ropes into two longer lines for the explorers’ use.

Dane did not wait for orders—after all, this was his project. He knotted one of those lines about his middle, leaving his hands free. Just as matter-of-factly Kosti took up the other, almost out of Rip’s hands, nor did the jetman pay any attention to Shannon’s protests.

“It’s starting up again,” Mura reported from beside the cliff.

Dane put his left hand on the wall and started off, with Kosti falling into step. They rounded the bend Dane had discovered into the continuation of the valley which was still packed with the cotton wool of the fog.

It was plain that no crawler had ever advanced this far. The narrow way was choked with piles of loose debris over which they helped each other to keep their footing. And the vibration in the wall grew stronger as they went.

Kosti thumped his fist against the stone as they paused for a breather.

“Those drums—they sure keep it up.”

The distant beat did carry with it some of the roll of a heavy drum.

“Kinda like the Storm Dancers on Gorbe—just a little. And that’s devilish stuff, gets into your blood ’til you want to get out and prance along with them. This—well, it’s nasty down deep—plain nasty. And you get to believing something’s waiting out there—” the jetman’s hand indicated the fog, “just waiting to pounce!”

They kept on, climbing now as each ridge of rubble they surmounted was a little higher than the preceding one. They must have been well above the surface of the valley where they had left the crawler when they came upon the strangest find of all.

Dane, clinging to an outcrop in the wall to retain his balance, teetered on the top of a mound. His boot slipped and he tumbled forward before Kosti could snatch him back, rolling down until he brought up with a bruising bump against a dark object. Under his clawing hands he felt, not the rough gravel and earth of the valley, but something else—a smooth sleekness— Had he come upon another ruined building this far from the city?

“Are you hurt?” Kosti called from above. “Look out, I’m coming down.”

Dane backed away from his find as Kosti came down feet first in a slide, his boots ringing against that buried thing with the unmistakable clang of metal.

“What the—!” The jetman was on his knees, feeling over that exposed surface. And he was able to identify it. “A ship!”

“What?” Dane crowded in. But now he was able to see the curve of the plates, various other familiar details. They
had
come upon the wreckage of a crash—a bad crash. The ship had jammed its way into the narrow neck of the valley as if it were a cork pounded into a bottle. If they were to go any farther they would have to climb over it. Dane took up his helmet mike and reported the find to the three at the crawler.

“The wreck of that ship you heard coming in?” Wilcox wanted to know. But Dane had seen enough to know that it was not.

“No, sir. This has been here a long time—almost buried and there’s rust eaten in. Years since this one lifted, I think——”

“Stay where you are—we’re coming up!”

“You can’t bring the crawler, sir. Footing is bad.”

In the end they did come, supporting Wilcox over the worst bits, keeping contact with the crawler by rope only. In the meantime Kosti prowled around and over the wreck, trying to find a hatch.

“It’s a rim prospector of a sort,” he reported as soon as Wilcox was settled on a rock to view the find. “But there’s something odd about it. I can’t name the type. And it’s been rooted here a good time. That hatch ought to be about here.” He kicked at a pile of loose gravel which banked in one side of the metal hulk. “I think we could dig in.”

Rip and Dane returned to the crawler and got the pioneer tools, always kept lashed to the under-carriage of that vehicle. With the shovel and lever they came back to work, taking turns at clearing the debris of years.

“What did I tell you!” Kosti was exultant as a black arc which must mark the top of an open hatch was uncovered.

But it was necessary to shift a lot more of the native soil of Limbo before any one of them could crawl into that hole. Rim prospectors were notoriously sturdy ships, if not swift travelers. They had to be designed to withstand conditions which would shatter liners or disturb even the crack freight- and mail-ships of the Companies.

And the condition of this one proved that its unknown builder had wrought even better than he had hoped. For the smash of its landing had not broken it into bits. Its carcass still hung together, although parts were telescoped.

Kosti leaned on the shovel after he threw out the last scoop of earth. “I can’t place it—” He shook his head as if his inability to identify the type of ship worried him.

“How could anyone?” demanded Rip impatiently. “She’s nothing but a scrap heap.”

“I’ve seen ’em smashed worse than this.” Kosti sounded annoyed. “But the structure—it’s wrong——”

Mura smiled. “Rather I would say, Karl, that it is right. I know of no modern ship which could so well survive the landing this one made.”

“ ‘No modern ship’?” Wilcox seized upon that. “You have seen one like this before then?”

Mura’s smile grew broader. “If I had seen one such as this plying its trade—then I would be five hundred, perhaps eight hundred years old. This resembles the Class Three, Asteroid Belt ships. There is one, I believe, on display in the Trade Museum at Terraport East. But how it came here—” he shrugged.

Dane’s historical cramming had not covered the fine points of ship design, but Kosti and Rip both understood the significance of that, and so did Wilcox.

“But,” the astrogator was the first to protest, “they didn’t have hyper-drive five hundred years ago. We were still confined to our own solar system——”

“Except for a few crazy experimenters,” Mura corrected.

“There are Terran colonies in other systems which are over a thousand years old, you know that. And the details of their flights are sagas in themselves. There were those who went out to cross the gap in frozen sleep, and those who lived for four, six, and eight generations in ships before their far off descendants trod the worlds their ancestors had set course for. And there were earlier variations of the hyper-drive, some of which may have worked, though their inventors never returned to Terra to report success. How an Asteroid prospector came to Limbo I can not tell you. But it has been here a very long time, that I will swear to.”

Kosti flashed his torch into the hole they had uncovered, “We can get in—at least for a way——”

Before the smash the prospector had been a small ship with painfully confined quarters. Compared to her the
Queen
was closer to a liner. And Kosti had to turn back at the inner hatch, unable to squeeze his bulk through the jammed door space. In the end Mura and Dane alone were able to force a path to what had been a combined storage and living quarters.

But under the beam of their torches a fact was immediately clear. A great gap through which soil shifted faced them. This section had been ripped open on the other side, the hole later buried by a slide. But the smash had not done that, the marks of a flamer were plain on the metal. Sometime after its crack-up the prospector had been burnt open, the reason plain. For the portion where they now stood had been stripped—although the traces of cargo containers were on the floor and along the crumpled walls.

“Looted!” Dane exclaimed as the light swept from floor to wall.

To his right was the telescoped section which must have contained the control cabin. There, too, were signs of the flamer but the unknown looters had had little luck beyond. For the holes revealed a mixture of rock and twisted metal which could never be salvaged. Everything forward of the one cargo section they stood in was a total loss.

Mura fingered that slit in the wall. “This was done some time ago—maybe even years. But I think that it was done a long, long time after the ship crashed.”

“Why did they want to get in here?”

“Curiosity—a desire to see what she was carrying. A prospector on a long course is apt to make surprising discoveries. And this ship must have had something worth the taking. It was looted. Then, so lightened, the wreckage may have turned over, perhaps earthquakes resettled it and buried it more completely. But it was looted——”

“You don’t think that the survivors of its crew may have returned? They could have taken off in an escape flitter before the crash——”

“No, there was too long a time between the crash and the looting. This ship was discovered by someone else and stripped. I do not think that they—” Mura pointed to the fore-compartment, “escaped.”

Did Limbo have intelligent inhabitants, natives who could use a flamer to cut through ship alloy? But the globe things—Dane refused to believe that those queer creatures had looted the prospector.

Before they climbed out of the ship Mura pushed as far as he could into the fore-section. And when he inched out again he was repeating a number.

“Xc—4 over 9532600,” he said. “Her registry, by some chance it is still visible. Remember that: Xc—4 over 9532600.”

But Dane was interested in another point. “That’s Terran registry!”

“I suspected that it would be. She is Asteroid class—perhaps an experimental ship with one of the very early hyper-drives. She might have been a private ship, the work of one or two men, an attempt to pioneer in a new direction. Could that tangle ever be uncoiled our engineers ought to discover some interesting alternate of the usual engine. It could be worth the effort to break through just for that——”