The Iron Breed (42 page)

The water itself had been poisoned by the passing touch of that loathsome mist. Sea life died, but died fleeing. And those refugees contaminated others well beyond. Those died also, though more slowly.

At last those who had resisted the hunt for the home world capitulated. With their limited knowledge, lacking as it was in those portions the First Ship people had destroyed, they could not deal with the monster from Iskar. And they must either find a way to strike it a death blow, or else transport all their people elsewhere.

Even as the
Pathfinder
had lifted, the rest of the labor force (which now meant all the able-bodied dwellers on Elhorn) had been at work rehabilitating the two colony ships. Whether those could ever be put in condition to take to space again no man knew. The
Pathfinder
had been constructed from a smaller scout which had been in company with the colony ships.

There were only four of them on board the
Pathfinder,
each a specialist in his or her field, and able to double in another. Ayana was both medic and historian; Tan, a scout and defense man; Jacel, the captain, was their com expert and navigator; Massa, the pilot and techneer. Four against the whole solar system from which the First Ships had fled in such fear that they had destroyed all references to their past.

Had there been a Cloud on the ancestral planet, too? Or worse still (if there could be worse), had men hunted other men to the death? For that, too, had happened in the past, the tapes revealed. At least on Elhorn, they had not resorted to arms to settle differences in belief.

The closer the
Pathfinder
came to their goal, the more Ayana feared what they might find.

For days of ship's time their flight within the ancestral solar system continued. By common consent they chose their target—the third planet from the sun. From the computer reports, that seemed to be the planet best suited to support life as they knew it.

All this time Jacel tried to raise some response to their ship's broadcast, but none came. That silence was sinister. Yet the mere lack of a reply signal could not turn them back now. So they went into a braking orbit about the world.

That it was not bare of life was apparent. Or at least it had not lacked intelligent life at one time. Vast splotches of cities spread far over the land masses. They could be picked up by viewers in daylight, and their glow at night (though sections were ominously dark) provided beacons. Still there was no answer to their signals.

“This I do not understand.” Jacel sat before his instruments, but his voice came to Ayana and Tan through the cabin com. “There is evidence of a high civilization. Yet not only do they not answer our signals, but there is no communication on the planet either.”

“But those lights—in the night!” Massa half-protested.

Ayana wanted to echo her. It was better to see those lights flashing out as day turned to night below, than to remark upon the glow which did not appear—the scars of darkness. Yet one looked more and more for those.

“Have you thought,” Tan asked, “that the lights may be automatic, that they come on because of the dark, and not because anyone presses a button or pulls a switch? And that where they are now dark some installation has failed?”

He put openly what was in all their minds. And that was the best explanation. But Ayana did not like to hear it. If they now raced through the skies above a dead world with only that vast sprawl of structures its abiding monument for a vanished people, then what had killed them, or driven them into space? And did that menace still lurk below?

Ayana wanted to turn her head, not watch the visa-screen. But that she could not do. It had a horrible fascination which held her in thrall.

“Without a signal we cannot find a landing site—” Jacel paused. “Wait! I am picking up something—a signal of sorts!”

They were once more in a day zone. Ayana could mark the shape of an ocean below. The land masses on this world were more or less evenly divided, two in each hemisphere. And they were over one such mass as Jacel reported his signal.

“Fading—it is very weak.” His voice sounded exasperated. “I shall try to tune it in again—”

“A message?” Tan asked. “Challenging who we are and what we are doing in their skies?” He spoke as if he expected that hostile reaction. But why? Unless the memory of the fears of the First Ship people touched him, even as it had her, Ayana thought.

But if that were so, if they were to be greeted as enemies—how could they hope to land? Better by far to abort—Though she was sure Tan would never consent to that.

Jacel, using the ship's resources, had another answer. The signal, he was certain, was mechanically beamed and carried no message. And as such it could have only one purpose—to guide in some visitor from space.

Hearing that, they made their decision, though not without reservations on Ayana's part, to use the beacon as a guide. As Massa pointed out, they could not continue in orbit indefinitely and they had no other lead. But they prepared for a rough landing. The computer gave no answers, only continued to gulp in all the information their instruments supplied.

With every protect device alerted, Ayana lay in her bunk. She shut her eyes, and would not look at the screen, glad in a cowardly fashion that it was not her duty to be in the control cabin, where she would have to watch.

The usual discomforts of landing shut out everything beyond the range of her own body, and she tensed and then relaxed. She had done this many times in practice, yet the truth differed so much from the simulation. A second or so later she blacked out.

As one waking out of a nightmare she regained consciousness. Then duty made its demands, and she fumbled with the webbing cocooning her body. It was only when she wriggled out of that protection that the silence of the ship impressed itself upon her; all the throbbing life in it was gone. They must be down, for the engines were shut off.

Not only down, but they had made a good landing, for the cabin was level. They must have ridden in the deter rockets well. So Jacel had been right to trust the beam.

Ayana stood up and felt the grip of gravity. She took a step or two, feeling oddly uncertain at first, holding to a bunk support, looking at Tan.

He lay inert, a thin trickle of blood oozing from one corner of his mouth. But even as she raised her hand to him, he opened his eyes, those wide gray eyes, and they focused on her.

“We made it!” He must have taken in at once the silence of the cabin, the fact that it was in correct position for a good landing. His hands sped to unhook his webbing.

“You are all right—?”

“Never better! We made it!” And the way he repeated that gave her a clue to his thoughts. Perhaps for all his outward show of confidence, Tan had had doubts, strong doubts after all.

He was out of the cabin ahead of her, already climbing for the control cabin before she could follow. Voices from there announced that the two responsible for what Ayana privately believed to be a miracle—their safe landing—were already rejoicing over that.

The scene outside as shown on the visa-screen quieted them. They had indeed landed in what must have once been a spaceport, for the scars of old deter and rise rocket fire were plain to be marked as the picture slowly changed. However, there were buildings also, towering bulks such as they had never seen on Elhorn.

To their sight, though those buildings stood at a distance, there were no signs of erosion or the passing of time. But neither were there any signs of life. And Jacel, monitoring his com, shook his head.

“Nothing. No broadcast except the signal which brought us in. And it is set—”

Set by whom, why? The questions in Ayana's mind must be shared by her crew mates. If they had landed on a silent and deserted world—what had rendered it so?

Massa was consulting other instruments. “Air—nothing wrong with that. We can breathe it. The gravity is a point or two less than we have known. Otherwise, this is enough like Elhorn to suit us.”

“Like Elhorn? With all that to explore!” Tan waved a hand at the screen where more and more of the huge building complex showed as the pickup slowly turned. This must be a city, Ayana decided. Though it pointed higher into the sky with its towers and blocks than any city did—or should.

To look at it aroused a queer repugnance in her, a feeling of reluctance to approach it. As if it were some crouching animal ready to pounce, perhaps actually ingest what came too near. She wanted none of those walls and towers. Yet on the screen the constantly moving scene proved that their landing site seemed to be completely surrounded by those buildings.

She could see no green of vegetation. No growth had seemingly dared to invade this place of stone. Nor was there any other ship berthed here.

“I think,” Jacel said as he leaned back in his seat, “this place is deserted—”

“Don't be too sure of that!” Tan retorted. “We could be watched right now. They might well have some reason to want us to believe no one is here. Just because you flashed out the old code, or what we believe is the old code, does not mean that they could understand it. How long has it been since the First Ships lifted? We have been on Elhorn five hundred planet years, but we have no idea how long was their voyage out, or ours back. A lot can change even in a single generation.”

He pointed out the obvious, but Ayana wished he would not. With every word he spoke those distant windows seemed more and more like cold eyes spying on them. And in all that mass of buildings there could be many hiding places for those who had no wish to be found.

“We cannot just stay here in the ship,” Jacel said. “Either we explore here—or we lift, try for a landing somewhere else.”

Ayana saw her head shake mirrored by the others. Now that they were down, the best thing to do was abide by their choice—explore.

Fiercely she fought her fears under control. Even if the people were dead there would be records. And those records could hold some secret which might halt the Cloud or otherwise aid those who had struggled to send them here. They had a duty that was not to be balked by shadows and uneasy fears. Some rebel emotion, though, replied to that argument; this fear she felt was not small, and she must work hard to subdue it.

They ran out the ramp. Tan opened the arms locker, and they all wore blasters at their belts as they went out. Massa remained on guard at the hatch, ready to activate the alarms at any sign of danger. There was a wind, but the sun was warm. Ayana could detect no odor in the breeze against her face. It was like any wind, and this might be a fall morning on her own home world.

“A long time—” Jacel had trotted over to the nearest burn scar, was down on one knee by that scorched fringe. “This was done a long time ago.” He held a radiation detect, and its answering bleat was low.

Tan stood with his hands on his hips, turning slowly as if he himself was a visa-recorder. “They were builders.” And there was excitement in his voice as he added: “What a world to claim! An empty world waiting for us!”

“Do not be too sure.” Jacel joined him. “I have a feeling—” He laughed as one startled and a little dismayed by his own thoughts. “I feel we are being watched.”

Tan's answering laugh had none of the other's apologetic undertones. He threw out his arms wide and high. “Ghosts—shadows—let them watch us if they will. I say mankind has come again to claim his home! And—let us get busy out there”—he waved to the buildings—“and find out what awaits us.”

But training remained to tame his exuberance a little. He did not indeed urge them to instant invasion of the watching, waiting city (if city it was). He was content to wait for their agreement that that must be done. Instead he got busy in the storage compartments, transporting to the open the parts of the flitter which must be assembled for a flight of discovery.

It was well into late afternoon by the signs before the framework of the small flyer was together. Tan was still working on it when Jacel appeared, stringing behind him a length of cord, while stacked in his arms were small boxes. Tan, perched on the nose of the flyer, hailed him.

“What are you doing?”

“Seeing that we—or the flitter—have no unheralded visitors. Nights can be dark.” Jacel set down his load. Without being asked, Ayana came to help him place the detects, string cord between them to complete a circle about the flitter.

This was one of the best warning devices they carried. Nothing could cross that circle of cord once it was set, for it created a repelling field of force. Not only that, but any attempt to approach would ring alarms in the ship.

“A trap for ghosts,” Tan said. But he did not protest as Jacel carefully triggered each box.

Tan finished and left the flitter, and Jacel made the final setting. They were safe within the ship once the ramp was in. For there was no possible way of attacking those holed up in a spacer; the ship was a fort in itself.

However, Tan seemed reluctant to follow the others up the ramp, to seal up for the night. He turned to look at the towers.

“Tomorrow!” He made a promise of that one word, spoken loud enough for Ayana to hear. Though whether he meant it for her or only himself she did not try to learn.

Tomorrow, yes—there would be no holding Tan back then. He would circle out, looping wider and wider with every turn, relaying back all the information the instruments on the flitter could pick up. Then they would learn whether the city was truly dead or not, for among those devices was one which registered the presence of life force. They were not altogether helpless—

Now why had she thought that? As if they were indeed under siege and had only the worst to fear? Ayana ran her tongue across her lips. She had been passed as emotionally stable, enough so (and the tests had been as severe as those preparing them could devise) to be selected for the voyage. But the minute she had entered this solar system, it was as if she had been attacked by forces which tampered with her emotions, threatened that stability in ways she could not understand. She was a medic—a trained scientist—yet she feared windows! Now she once more fought those fears—pushed them back—strove to conquer them.