Her hand was on his arm, steadying, strengthening. “Don’t fail me, Tetsuo. You’re the last one I’ve got. I just had to paralyze Scoresby.”
“Thanks—thanks, chief. I’m all right now. Let’s go.”
They fumbled through blindness. The engines roared, full speed ahead with a ghost on the bridge. Men were stumbling and cursing and screaming in the dark. Someone switched on the battle-stations siren, and its howl was the last voice of insanity.
Struggle in the dark, wrestling, paralyzing the berserk, calling on all the iron will which had lifted humankind to the stars—slow restoration of order, men creeping to general quarters, breathing heavily in the guttering light of paper torches.
The engines cut off and the ship snapped into normal matter state. Helena Jansky saw blood-red sunlight through the viewport. There was no time to sound the alarm before the ship crashed.
*
“A hundred men. No more than a hundred men alive.”
She wrapped her cloak tight about her against the wind and stood looking across the camp. The streaming firelight touched her face with red, limning it against the utter dark of the night heavens, sheening faintly in the hair that blew wildly around her strong bitter countenance. Beyond, other fires danced and flickered in the gloom, men huddled around them while the cold seeped slowly to their bones. Here and there an injured human moaned.
Across the ragged spine of bare black hills they could still see the molten glow of the wreck. When it hit, the atomic converters had run wild and begun devouring the hull. There had barely been time for the survivors to drag themselves and some of the cripples free, and to put the rocky barrier between them and the mounting radioactivity. During the slow red sunset, they had gathered wood, hewing with knives at the distorted scrub trees reaching above the shale and snow of the valley. Now they sat waiting out the night.
Takahashi shuddered. “God, it’s cold!”
“It’ll get colder,” said Donovan tonelessly. “This is an old planet of an old red dwarf sun. Its rotation has slowed. The nights are long.”
“How do you know?” Lieutenant Elijah Cohen glared at him out of a crudely bandaged face. The firelight made his eyes gleam red. “How do you know unless you’re in with them? Unless you arranged this yourself?”
Wocha reached forth a massive fist. “You shut up,” he rumbled.
“Never mind,” said Donovan. “I just thought some things would be obvious. You saw the star, so you should know it’s the type of a burned-out dwarf. Since planets are formed at an early stage of a star’s evolution, this world must be old too. Look at these rocks—citrified, back when the stellar energy output got really high just before the final collapse; and nevertheless eroded down to bare snags. That takes millions of years.”
He reflected that his reasoning, while sound enough, was based on foreknown conclusions. Cohen’s right. I have betrayed them. It was Valduma, watching over me, who brought Wocha and myself unhurt through the crash. I saw, Valduma, I saw you with your hair flying in the chaos, riding witch-like through sundering ruin, and you were laughing. Laughing! He felt ill.
“Nevertheless, the planet has a thin but breathable atmosphere, frozen water, and vegetable life,” said Takahashi. “Such things don’t survive the final hot stage of a sun without artificial help. This planet has natives. Since we were deliberately crashed here, I daresay the natives are our earlier friends.” He turned dark accusing eyes on the Ansan. “How about it, Donovan?”
“I suppose you’re right,” he answered. “I knew there was a planet in the Nebula, the natives had told me that in my previous trip. This star lies near the center, in a ‘hollow’ region where there isn’t enough dust to force the planet into its primary, and shares a common velocity with the Nebula. It stays here, in other words.”
“You told me—” Helena Jansky bit her lip, then slowly forced the words out: “You told me, and I believed you, that there was nothing immediately to fear when the Nebulites took over our controls. So we didn’t fight them; we didn’t try to overcome their forces with our own engines. And it cost us the ship and over half her crew.”
“I told you what happened to me last time,” he lied steadfastly. “I can’t help it if things were different this trip.”
She turned her back. The wind blew a thin hissing veil of dry snow across her ankles. A wounded man suddenly screamed out there in the dark.
How does it feel, Donovan? You made her trust you and then betrayed her for a thing that isn’t even human. How does it feel to be a Judas?
“Never mind recriminations,” said Takahashi. “This isn’t the time to hold trials. We’ve got to decide what to do.”
“They have a city on this planet,” said Donovan. “Drogobych, they call it, and the planet’s name is Arzun. It lies somewhere near the equator, they told me once. If they meant us to make our own way to it—and it would be like them—then it may well be due south. We can march that way, assuming that the sun set in the west.”
“Nothing to lose,” shrugged the Terran. “But we haven’t many weapons, a few assorted sidearms is all, and they aren’t much use against these creatures anyway.”
Something howled out in the darkness. The ground quivered, ever so faintly, to the pounding of heavy feet.
“Wild animals yet!” Cohen grinned humorlessly. “Better sound battle stations, Captain.”
“Yes, yes, I suppose so.” She blew her whistle, a thin shrilling in the windy dark. As she turned around, Donovan saw a gleam running along her cheek. Tears?
The noise came closer. They heard the rattle of claws on stone. The Terrans moved together, guns in front, clubs and rocks and bare hands behind. They have guts, thought Donovan. God, but they have guts!
“Food would be scarce on a barren planet like this,” said Ensign Chundra Dass. “We seem to be elected.”
The hollow roar sounded, echoing between the hills and caught up by the thin harrying wind. “Hold fire,” said Helena. Her voice was clear and steady. “Don’t waste charges. Wait—”
The thing leaped out of darkness, a ten-meter length of gaunt scaled body and steel-hard claws and whipping tail, soaring through the snow-streaked air and caught in the vague uneasy firelight, Helena’s blaster crashed, a lightning bolt sizzled against the armored head.
The monster screamed. Its body tumbled shatteringly among the humans, it seized a man in its jaws and shook him and trampled another underfoot. Takahashi stepped forward and shot again at its dripping wound. The blaster bolt zigzagged wildly off the muzzle of his gun.
Even the animals can do it—!
“I’ll get him, boss!” Wocha reared on his hind legs, came down again with a thud, and charged. Stones flew from beneath his feet. The monster’s tail swept out, a man tumbled before it with his ribs caved in, and Wocha staggered as he caught the blow. Still he rushed in, clutching the barbed end of the tail to his breast. The monster writhed, bellowing. Another blaster bolt hit it from the rear. It turned, and a shot at its eyes veered away.
Wocha
