The Mile Long Spaceship (22 page)

He held her arm tightly as they walked among the robots dressed in the villagers' clothes. She was weeping quietly now, making no sound, not even shaking, just steady tears flowing down her cheeks. Keith muttered a curse and shouted for Sorenson who was giving last minute instructions to the few remaining villagers waiting for the setting of the moon. The atom powered ground car stood loaded with supplies for the journey.

"Sorenson, take care of her. Put her to bed in the mayor's house. I'll stay over and bring her in with me tomorrow."

Sorenson looked from the woman back to Keith. "But how will you make it out?" he blurted.

"We'll use a flyer on the ground. If her husband and son get back, they'll come with us. Otherwise, I'll bring her alone."

When Taros vanished Sorenson and the last of the villagers sped out of sight toward the towering trees. Despite the cheerful lighting of the houses, the village had an air of abandonment which deepened as one by one the house lights blinked out. In the rear of the mayor's house Marilyn slept fitfully under sedation, and finally Keith stretched out on the lounge in his office and also slept.

He cooked their breakfast when he heard her moving about, and by the time she appeared, he was ready to pour the coffee. She sat down opposite him, her eyes fastened on the plate before her.

"Better eat," he said. "We have lots to do today. You'll have to help get the flyer ready."

"Yes," she answered. When he finished his eggs, she rose and cleared the table. Her food was untouchcd.

Keith stripped down the craft as Marilyn made up a list of supplies for the trip. He noticed without commcnt that she prepared enough food for four. Toward noon the flyer was packed and ready. There was nothing more to be done until Taros set that night.

He studied his charts and calculated quickly the times for traveling during the next eight nights. It would take every minute of time they had. He frowned as he arrived at the figure one hundred ten miles per hour for the sixty four and two-thirds hours when it would be dark and Taros and its companion scanner would not be keeping watch.

The afternoon wore on and Keith put away his charts to prowl restlessly about the mayor's house. Contemptuously he fingered the stuff that covered the old fashioned lounge and glanced over the outdated books and ornaments that cluttered the room. He had been in the Space Exploration Control since his eighteenth birthday, seventeen years earlier. This assignment had come as a blow to him, baby sitting a bunch of colonists. Like most of the Control officers he had nothing but scorn for the earthbound dirt grubbers and their petty, smug lives. By God, he thought, if someone had come to him and told him he had to leave his ship, he'd tell him to go to hell, and put him there if necessary. But these people had crossed their hands and had sung a few hymns and had moved without an argument. He shook his head angrily; their psychology was almost as alien to him as that of the Amories. It hadn't been worth the risk of discovery. He wheeled about as Marilyn entered the room hesitantly. Like her, he thought, scared to death of him. Ready to run like a rabbit.

"Captain, you should rest now if you're going to drive all night. Lieutenant Sorenson gave me these capsules... If you'd like one..."

Keith's mouth curled in an unpleasant smile and he said coolly, "Keep them. Just call me at 10:00." She turned to leave and he added icily, "And, Mrs. Roget, don't leave. I've made all the flyers inoperative and I set the lock for the one we're to use."

The woman turned sharply. "I'm not going with you, Captain!" she cried fiercely. "I demand one of the flyers to use to look for them. What harm can that do? We use the flyers all the time, and I'd be going away from Landing, not toward it."

"Those scanners aren't to pick up a single flyer, nothing to make them look twice."

"I'll walk then," she cried. "Don't you understand? I can't just leave them here to die! I can't!"

Keith shrugged and turned from her taking a paper from the desk and handing it to her. "Read it, Mrs. Roget. It gives specific directions for your husband to follow if he returns before take-off time. If he does get back and does follow those instructions, he'll beat us to Lanning. But flying is strictly forbidden until the very last day; he'll wait until then for the time lock to be released. Now stop being a child." He pulled off his boots as he spoke and sat on the side of the lounge.

"You're not lying?" Marilyn asked, wanting to believe.

"Read the instructions," he said brusquely and lay down. He listened to her footsteps as she replaced the paper on the desk and left.

The roads through the forest were merely wide, cleared thoroughfares between the giant trees, held as nearly as possible to straight lines. Since the ground cars and trucks actually never touched the ground except when at rest, the trailing vines that covered the forest floor were allowed to grow undisturbed. Skimming eighteen inches above it, it took on the appearance of smooth, oiled concrete, and would feel just as hard if they should hit an obstruction at the speed Keith held. Marilyn sat motionless beside him oblivious to the streak of trees and vines they passed at speeds that often hit one hundred thirty. Keith's face set in lines of intense concentration as he gazed steadily into the opening among the trees and with part of his mind listened to the roar of the jet streams of air. After three hours without slowing once, he brought the flyer to a dead stop, braking in quickly and smoothly.

"What's wrong?" Nlarilyn asked almost disinterestedly.

"Trees are having a hypnotic effect," he said shortly. They were thinner here and he adjusted the light downward. Marilyn handed him coffee and he drank it quickly. Five minutes later they were racing along the forest road again.

They traveled for nine hours and sixteen minutes that first night, and when dawn brought the second scanner into play, Keith slumped over the wheel of the flyer letting his muscles jerk and twitch as they sought relaxation. They ate wordlessly and slept encased in air mattresses.

When he awakened, he thought she had gone. He was alone by the flyer and the forest was noisy with birds. The plastic mattress cover was now too warm as the sun advanced across the sky. He got up and repacked his bed and cover in the flyer and munched on a biscuit. He didn't hear her return until she was nearly up to the flyer and then he stared. She was dressed in a green, two-piece knit suit that covered her entirely from her wrists to her ankles. She was delicately slender and well formed. He realized he was staring at her only when she flushed slightly and turned away. With a disturbing sensation that he had made a mistake in not letting her wait for her husband he jerked his chart from the flyer and walked to the trees to sit down and mark off one night. Later in the afternoon he strapped on his sonic gun and hoped one of the cats would make an appearance that day.

The third night they came upon the first of a series of boulders that jutted out into the clearing. By day, or even by night, at a reasonable speed, it would have been simple to avoid them. As it was he had to cut his speed in half, and then some more, to keep the flyer above them, and out of the trees. Left to itself it would try to maintain the eighteen inches he had set, but in doing so, it would veer upward and meet disaster against the branches of the trees. Four hours after starting he called a halt for coffee.

"How did they find out an attack was coming?" Marilyn asked, holding her cup in both hands to warm them.

Keith leaned back, grudgingly grateful to her, and forced his mind off the boulders he knew lay ahead of them. He demanded obedience from his muscles and nerves, compelling himself to untense. "One of your teachers from Lanning had a group of boys on Taros for a holiday and geology trip and he came across the scanner. He had enough sense not to disturb it and reported it immediately to the Control. From his description they decided it was probably a heat-sensing device and this plan fit. There were several alternative plans already drawn up, if the opportunity ever came to use them. The fleet was dispatched to maneuver in this sector for cover and then ostensibly withdraw again. When they leave, every person on Kulane is to be aboard the ships ready to take off. That will give us two days or more to finish setting the trap; it'll take them at least that long to gather in the sector, but this time it will be different."

"But you said there'd be no battle," she said quickly, a note of hope making her voice husky.

"There won't be. They'll think they've done it again. Hit and run. But we'll have a fix on them and follow them to home base."

"I see." Her voice went flat again. "Kulane will be destroyed as the other worlds were. Why didn't you tell them the truth?"

"This was the only way," Keith said coldly. "As it is, this mass evacuation is a calculated risk, and if there had been four thousand more inhabitants, it wouldn't have been attempted." He started the motor again, remembering the look on her face when he set the lock on the two seater flyer that was fast enough to get from the village to Lanning in a single night.

In eight and a half hours they made only five hundred fifty miles. Keith drank his coffee quickly and stalked away. He walked several miles scouting the road that lay ahead of them and returned in a vicious mood. Marilyn avoided his eyes as she handed him the rest of his breakfast.

"Do you think the others are having trouble?" she asked after a long silence.

"It'll be easier for them. Those trucks, cars, or whatever you call them, are made for skimming. The flyer isn't." He didn't add that there were also enough men to drive in shifts.

She nodded gravely and prepared her bed.

He wondered if she slept and knew she must sometime despite the growing hollows beneath her eyes and the darkness of the hollows.

That afternoon he unloaded some of the food and replaced it with boulders. Marilyn helped, rearranging the remaining food, straining to help lift the heavy stones into the flyer. "Might do some good," Keith grunted wiping his face with the back of his hand.

"Do you think we'll make it to Lanning in time?" she asked quietly.

"Not if we have many nights like last night. Afraid?" He could feel the sweat trickling down his back where his tunic didn't touch and he hunched his shoulders letting the material soak it up.

"There's a stream about a quarter of a mile down there," Marilyn said pointing. She was perspiring and moist and her hair had begun to curl about her face where short stray ends worked loose from the roll high on her head.

"Are you afraid?" he repeated.

"I don't know." she answered simply as if she hadn't considered it. "I keep praying Stephan and Stevie have got the message and will be there waiting for us. Perhaps I am afraid." Her eyes met his and she added, "But not of dying."

Keith turned sharply snatching his clean uniform from the flyer. "I'll go wash first and get dried. We'll freeze when the sun goes down," he said in the same voice he used with his sergeant.

That night they drove for eight hours and fifteen minutes and covered five hundred twenty miles.

"I can't believe one lone flyer in the sky would be disastrous," Marilyn exclaimed, breaking into his monotonous swearing. "You can't stand many more nights like that and you know it."

"Wc can't take that risk!" he shot back at her. "One object in the sky might draw attention that would make this whole trek stand out. We don't even know for sure what kind of scanners they are using."

"Then be sensible and stop cursing those rocks. That isn't going to move them!" She slapped the can she was holding to the ground angrily. "What's happened to that perfect Control training, Captain? Are you afraid you'll be stuck here in the forest when the Amories attack?"

"Goddam it! Shut up! I've got a squadron to lead on a battleship! That's where I belong, not out here in a wilderness leading a bunch of moon-faced settlers home to safety. This shouldn't have been tried in the first place! We'll give it all away and the Amories will bypass Kulane and hit somewhere else while we're playing nursemaid. Our first chance at them and some big brass has to louse it up with a stunt like this!"

"You would have voted against us, wouldn't you?" she asked softly, a look of repugnance crossing her face. "Captain Winters, just what are you fighting for?"

Keith felt his hands become fists and involuntarily he took a step toward her. Abruptly he turned and stalked off, conscious of her following stare until he passed from her sight.

He walked unthinking until his legs throbbed and only then did he turn back. She was standing before the flyer and without raising her voice she said urgently, "There's a cat to my left! I think it's ready to spring."

Keith faded back several steps to get a view of the rear of the flyer, but he didn't dare risk hitting the ship. He could see the great beast moving, agonizingly slow, between the ten foot tree trunks. It was cat-like only in its tawny color and its crouching, ready-to-spring stalking. Its hairless head was long with a mouth that could open a foot wide; the rest of it, covered with stubby yellowish hair, seemed to be mostly long powerful legs built for leaping.

"I'll attract it over here," Keith called and stepped in front of the flyer.

"It won't change its prey," Marilyn answered. "Walk around behind me. As soon as I start to move it will jump. It will make two leaps; one to snatch me up and the next back to the trees. You'll have to be fast. If it missed me it will keep going and try again before you know it. I'll count three, take two steps away from the flyer and dive back under at three."

"Marilyn, stand still!" Keith shouted and was furious with himself. "I'll circle it."

"They're never alone," she said. She glanced at him then and said steadily, "One." She took a step away from the ship. "Two." Another step. "Three." She whirled and dived and the beast was in the air higher than Keith's head. It landed without stopping its forward momentum, its claws raking the spot where she had been the second before. Keith's gun fired and the creature crashed to the ground and moved no more. He ran to Marilyn and they climbed into the flyer before the cat's mate appeared at the edge of the woods. It sniffed their presence, hesitated momentarily, then seized its partner and dragged it off through the trees.