Sargasso of Space (Solar Queen Series) (8 page)

Kosti grinned. “It had to be!”

They crawled out of the flitter and, on impulse, linked hands as they started for the dim pillar which was the
Queen.
The contact of palm against palm was not only insurance and reassurance, but it was also security of a type Dane felt he needed—and guessed that his companions wanted also. The menacing, alien mist pressed in upon them. Its damp congealed greasily on their helmets, dripped from them as they moved.

But ten paces took them to the welcome arch of the ramp and they went up, to stand a moment later in the pleasant light and warmth of the entrance hatch. Jasper Weeks teetered back and forth there, his pallid little face expressing worry.

“Oh—you—” was his unflattering greeting.

Kosti laughed. “Who did you expect, little man—a Sensor dragon breathing fire? Sure, it’s us, and we’re glad to be back——”

“Something wrong?” Mura interrupted.

Weeks stepped to the outer opening of the hatch once more. “The other flitter—we haven’t heard from them for an hour. Captain ordered them back as soon as he saw the fog closing in. Survey tape says these fogs sometimes last a couple of days—but they aren’t usual this time of the year.”

Kosti whistled and Mura leaned back against the wall, unbuckling his helmet.

Several days.” Dane thought of that. To be lost out in that soup for days! You’d just have to stay grounded and hope for the best. But an emergency landing in the mountains under such conditions—! Now he could understand why Weeks fidgeted at the hatch. Their own journey over the unobstructed plain was, under the circumstances, as a stroll in a Terran park, compared to the difficulties those on the other flitter might be forced to face.

They went up to make their report to the Captain. But all through it he sat with at least half of his attention given to the com where Tang Ya sat before the master visascreen, his hand ready for the key of the caster or to tend the rider beam which might guide the missing flyer in. Somewhere out in the mystery which was now Limbo was not only Ali, but Rip, Tau and Steen Wilcox—a good section of their crew,

“There it is again!” Tang’s forehead creased, his hands pulled the phones from close contact with his ears. As he did so the rest heard the clamor which had jolted him. Not unlike the drone of the rider beam—it scaled up to a screech which was real pain.

It continued steadily for a space and as Dane listened to it he became conscious of something else—a muffled rhythm deep within that drone—a rhythm he had known before—when he laid his hands upon the wall of the sinister valley. This disturbance was akin to the vibration in the distant rock!

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the sound was gone. Tang put on his earphones once more and listened for a signal—either from the missing flitter or from Ali’s personal corn-unit

“What is that?” Mura asked.

Captain Jellico shrugged. “Your guess is as good as ours. It may be a signal of some sort—been cutting in at regular intervals all day.”

“So we must admit—” that was Van Rycke looming in the door of the control cabin, “that we are not alone on Limbo. In fact there is much more to Limbo than meets the casual eye.”

Dane voiced his own suspicion. “Those archaeologists—” he began, but the Captain favored him with a sharp pointed stare that stopped him almost in mid-word.

“We have no idea what is at the root of this,” Jellico said coldly. “You men get some food and rest——”

Dane, smarting from his abrupt dismissal, trailed Mura and Kosti down to the mess cabin. As they passed the Captain’s private quarters they could hear the wild shrieks of the Hoobat. That tiling sounded, Dane thought, just the way he felt. And even warm food, bearing no resemblance to the iron rations he had eaten earlier, did little to raise the general curtain of gloom.

But the meal had an excellent effect on Kosti’s spirits. “That Rip,” he announced to the table at large, “he’s got a lot of sense. And Mr. Wilcox, he knows what he’s doing. They’re all snug somewhere and’ll stay holed up until this stuff clears. Nobody’ll come out in this——”

Was Kosti right there, Dane wondered. Suppose there were those on Limbo who knew the tricks of the climate, who were familiar enough with such fogs to be able to navigate through them—use them as a cover—? That signal they had heard blatting out of the com—could it be a beam to guide some expedition creeping through the mist? An expedition heading toward the unsuspecting
Queen!

8
   
FOG BOUND

T
HOSE OF THE
Queen’s
men, who had no definite duties engaging them elsewhere, drifted to the hatch which gave upon the gray wool of the new Limbian landscape. They would have liked to hole up close to the control section and Tang’s com, but the presence of the Captain there was a dampener. It was better to hunker down at the top of the ramp, look out into the mist, and strain one’s ears for the motor purr of a flitter which did not arrive.

“They’re smart,” observed Kosti for the twentieth time. “They won’t risk their necks plowing through this muck. But Ali—that’s different. He was snatched before this started.”

“You think it is poachers?” ventured Weeks.

His big partner considered the point. “Poachers? Yeah—but on this Limbo what have they got to poach—tell me that? We aren’t pulling in a cargo of sveek furs, nor arlun crystals—leastways I haven’t seen any of those lying around waiting to, be picked up. What about those dead things back in the valley, Thorson,” he turned to Dane, “did they look as if they had anything worth poaching?”

“They weren’t armed—or even clothed—as far as we could tell,” Dane replied a bit absently. “And their fields grew spicy stuff I never saw before——”

“Drugs—could it be drugs now?” inquired Weeks.

“A new kind then—Tau didn’t recognize the leaves.” Dane’s head was up as he faced out into the mist. He was almost sure—there—there it was again! “Listen,” he caught at Kosti, dragged the big man out on the ramp.

“Hear anything now?” he demanded a moment later.

There was sound in the fog, a fog which was now three parts night, through which the signal light on the nose of the
Queen
could not cut. The regular beat of a true running motor was magnified by some trick of the mist until it seemed that a whole fleet of small flyers was bearing down upon the space ship from all points of the compass.

Dane whirled and brought his hand down on the lever which controlled the lights along the ramp. Even swirled in the fog as they were, some faint gleam might break through to offer a landing mark for the flitter. Weeks had disappeared. Dane could hear the clatter of his space boots on the ladder within as he sped with the news. But before the wiper could have reached control a new marker blazed into view, the full powered searchlight from the nose, a beacon which could not be blanketed out, no matter how its rays were diffused.

And in that same instant a dark object swept by, so close that Dane leaped back, certain it was going to graze the ramp. The beat of the motor was loud, then it thinned, to grow into a roar once more as the shadow appeared for a second time, circling closer to the ground.

It landed with an audible smacking grind which suggested that the fog spoiled distance judgment. And to the foot of the ramp came three figures which continued to be muffled shapes until they were nearly at the hatch.

“Man—oh, man!” Rip’s rich voice came to the ears of the watchers as he halted to pat the side of the ship. “It’s good to see the old girl again—Lordy, it’s good!”

“How did you make it back through this?” Dane asked.

“We had to,” the astrogator-apprentice told him simply. “There was no place back in the ranges to set down. Those mountains are straight up and down—or they look that way. We got on the beam—except when—Say, what’s the cause of the interference? We were thrown off twice by it. Couldn’t cut it out——”

Steen Wilcox and Tau followed him at a slower pace. The Medic moved wearily, his emergency kit in his hand. And Wilcox had only a grunt for the reception party, pushing past them to climb to control. But Rip lingered to ask another question.

“Ali——?”

Dane retold the story of what they had discovered in the valley clearing.

“But how—?” was Rip’s second puzzled question.

“We don’t know. Unless they went straight up. And it wasn’t space enough to hold a flitter. But look how those crawler tracks ran straight into the cliff. Rip, there’s something queer about Limbo——”

“How far was that valley from the ruins?” the astro-gator-apprentice’s voice lost much of its warmth, it was quieter, with a new crispness.

“We were nearer to those than to the
Queen.
But the fog hit us on the way back and we didn’t see them—if we did pass over the location.”

“And you couldn’t raise Ali on the com-unit after that one interrupted signal?”

“Tang’s been trying. And we kept open all the time we were out.”

“They might have stripped that off him at once,” Rip conceded. “It would be a wise move for them. He could give us a fix otherwise——”

“But could we get a fix on a com-unit? On one which no one was using—” Dane began to see a thin chance. “That is if it’s power was still working?”

“I don’t know. But the range would be pretty limited. We could ask Tang—” Rip was already on his way up the ladder to where the com-tech was on duty.

Dane glanced at his watch, making a swift calculation squaring ship time with hours measured on Limbo. It was night. Suppose Tang was able to pick up a call from Ali’s com-unit—they could not trace it now.

They did not find the com-tech alone. All the officers of the
Queen
were there and again Tang was holding the earphones well away from his head so that they could hear the discordance which beat out from some hidden point in the fog-bound world.

Wilcox spoke as the two younger men came in, “That’s it! Cut right across the rider beam. I got two fixes on it. But,” he shrugged, “with the atmospherics what they are and this soup covering everything, how accurate those are is a big question. It comes from the mountains——”

“Not just some form of static?” Captain Jellico appealed to Tang.

“Decidedly not! I don’t think it’s a signal—though it may be a rider beam. More like a big installation—”

“What kind of installation would produce a broadcast such as that?” Van Rycke wanted to know.

Tang put the earphones down on the snap desk at his elbow. “A good sized one—about as big as the HG computer on Terra!”

There was a moment of startled silence. An installation with the same force as HG on this deserted world! They had to have time to assimilate that. But, Dane noted, not one of them questioned Tang’s statement.

“What is it doing here?” Van Rycke’s voice held a note of real wonder. “What
could
it be used for—?”

“It might be well,” Tang warned, “to know who is running it. Remember, Kamil has been picked up. They probably know a lot about us while we’re still in the dark——”

“Poachers—” that was Jellico but he advanced the suggestion as if he didn’t really believe in it himself.

“With something as big as an HG com under then-control? Maybe—” but Van Rycke was plainly dubious. “Anyway we can’t get out and look around until the fog clears——”

The ramp was drawn in, the ship put under regular routine once more. But Dane wondered how many of the crew were able to sleep. He hadn’t expected to, until the fatigue produced from the adventures of the past twenty-four hours of duty pushed him under and he spun from one dream to another, always pursuing Ali through crooked valleys and finally between the tower- ing banks of the HG computer, unable to catch the speeding engineer-apprentice.

His watch registered nine the next morning when he approached the hatch open once more on Limbo. But it might have been the depths of night—save the gray of the mist was three or four shades lighter than it had been when he had seen it last. To his eyes however it was as thick as in the hour when they had returned to the ship.

Rip stood halfway down the ramp, wiping his hand on his thigh as he lifted it from the dripping guide rope where the moisture condensed in large oily drops. He raised a worried face to Dane as the other edged along the slippery surface to join him.

“It doesn’t seem to be clearing any,” Dane stated the obvious.

“Tang thinks he got a fix—a fix on Ali’s unit!” Shannon burst out. He reached once more for the guide rope and faced west, staring out into those cottony swirls hungrily as if by will alone he could force the stuff away from his line of vision.

“From where—north?”

“No, west!”

From the west where the ruins lay—where Rich’s party were encamped! Then they were right, Rich had something to do with Limbo’s mystery.

“That interference was cut out sometime early this morning,” Rip continued. “Conditions must have been better for about ten minutes. Tang won’t swear to it, but he’s sure himself that he caught the buzz of a live helmet com.”

“Pretty far—the ruins,” Dane made the one objection. But he was as certain as Rip that if the com-tech mentioned it at all, it was because he had been nine-tenths sure he was right. Tang was not given to wild guesses.

“What are we going to do about it?” the cargo-apprentice added.

Rip twisted his big hands about the rope. “What can we do?” he wanted to know helplessly. “We can’t just go off and hope to come up against the ruins. If they had a caster on it would be different——”

“What about that? Aren’t they supposed to keep in touch with the ship? Couldn’t a flitter get to them riding in on their caster beam?” Dane asked.

“It could—if there were a beam,” Rip returned. “They went off the air when the fog came in. Tang has been calling them at ten minute intervals all night—had the emergency frequency in use so they’d be sure and answer. Only they haven’t!”

And, without any caster beam to guide it, no flitter could pierce this murk and be sure of landing at the ruins. Yet a com-unit had registered there—perhaps Ali’s—and that only a short time ago.

“I’ve been out there,” Rip pointed to the ground they could not see from the ramp. “If I hadn’t had a line fastened I’d been lost before I got four feet away—”

Dane could believe that. But he knew the restlessness which must be needling Rip now. To be kept prisoner here just when they had their first clue as to where Kamil might be—! It was maddening in a way. He edged down the slippery ramp, found the cord Rip had left looped there, and took an end firmly in hand, venturing out into the gray cloud.

The mist condensed in droplets on his tunic, trickled down his face, left an odd metallic taint on his lips. He walked on, taking one cautious step at a time, using the rope to keep him oriented.

A dark object loomed out of the gray and he neared it warily, only to recognize it with an embarrassed laugh as one of the crawlers—the one which had made the journey back and forth to deliver Rich’s material to his chosen camp site.

Back and forth——

Dane’s hand closed on the tread. What if—? They couldn’t be sure—they could only hope——

He used the cord to haul himself back to the ramp, the need for haste making him stumble. If what he hoped was true—then they had the answer to their problem. They could find the camp, make a surprise descent upon the archaeologist, a descent which the other might not be prepared to meet.

There was the ramp and Rip waiting. The astrogator-apprentice must have guessed from Dane’s expression that he had discovered something, but he asked no questions, only fell in behind as the other hurried into the ship.

“Where’s Van Rycke—Captain Jellico?”

“Captain’s asleep—Tau made him take a rest,” Rip answered. “Van Rycke is in his cabin, I think.”

So Dane made his way to his own superior’s office. If only what he hoped
was
true! It would be a stroke of luck—the best luck they had had since that auction had brought them this headache which was Limbo.

The cargo-master was stretched out on his bunk, his hands behind his head. Dane hesitated in the doorway but Van Rycke’s blue eyes were not closed and they did roll in his direction. He asked a question first:

“Have you used the crawler in the past two days, sir?”

“To my knowledge no one has—why?”

“Then it was only used for one purpose here,” Dane’s excitement grew, “and that was to carry Dr. Rich’s supplies to his camp——”

Van Rycke sat up. Not only sat up, but reached for his boots and pulled them on his feet.

“And you think that the fix has been left on that camp. It might just be, son, it might just be.” He was tugging on his tunic now.

Rip caught on. “A guide all ready to go!” he exulted. “

We hope,” Van Rycke applied a cautious warning.

It was the cargo-master who led the way out of the
Queen
once more, back to the parked crawler. The low slung cargo shifter was standing just as Dane had left it in the shelter of the
Queens
fins, its blunt nose pointing forward, out of the enclosure of the fins, to make a quarter turn to the west! The auto-fix was still on the camp. Dane took a running jump for the slow moving vehicle and brought it to a stop. But it was on a line which would take it, fog or no fog, straight to the camp where it had carried supplies two days before. And it would provide an unerring guide for men roped to it. They had a chance now to locate Ali.

The cargo-master made no comment but started toward the
Queen
, the others following, Dane glanced over his shoulder at the crawler.

“If we had one of those portable flamers—”he muttered and Rip caught him up on that.

“A sonic screamer would be more to the point!”

Dane was startled. A flamer could be used as a threat or a tool with which to force one’s way into a fortification. It need not be a weapon. But a sonic screamer-there was no protection against the unseen waves which could literally tear a man apart. If Rip wanted a screamer he must fear real trouble. Since the
Queen
was a law abiding ship and carried neither fitting the point must remain purely academic.

Van Rycke climbed to control. And as he rapped at the Captain’s private cabin they could hear the screaming of the Hoobat. Jellico opened the panel, his face wearing a weary frown. Before he greeted the cargo-master he slapped the cage of the blue creature, setting it to oscillating crazily, but the shaking up did nothing to discourage the throat splitting squalls.

The cargo-master watched the frenzied Hoobat. “How long has Queex been acting that way, Captain?”