Andre Norton - Galactic Derelict

“That’s our baby!” The Major’s face was alight with enthusiasm as he sighted the derelict. “What can you do about her, boys?”

But one of the crew focused glasses in another direction. “Hey—those things are mammoths!” he shouted. As one, his fellows turned to follow his directing finger.

“Sure,” snapped the Major. “Look at the ship, Wilson. If she is intact, can we possibly swing a direct transfer?”

Reluctantly the other man abandoned the mammoth family for business. He studied the derelict through his lenses. “Some job. Biggest transfer we ever did was the sub frame—”

“I know that! But that was two years ago, and Crawford’s experiments have proved that the grid can be expanded without losing power. If we can take this one straight through without any dismantling, we’ve put the schedule ahead maybe five years! And you know what that will mean.”

“And who’s going to go down there to set up a grid with those outsize elephants watching him? We have to have a clear field to work in and no interruptions. A lot of the material won’t stand any rough handling.”

“Yeah,” echoed one of his subordinates. Again the lenses swung to the north. “Just how are you goint to shoo the mammoths out?”

“Scout job, I suppose.” That resigned comment came from Ashe as he joined the party. “Well, I’m admitting right here and now that I have no ideas, bright or otherwise, on how to make a mammoth decide to take a long walk. But we’re open for suggestions.”

They watched the browsing beasts in silence. Nobody volunteered any ideas. It appeared that this particular problem was not yet covered by any rule on or off the book.

“What we need is a mine field—like the one planted around H.Q.,” Ross said at last.

“Mine field?” repeated the man Kelgarries had called Wilson. Then he said again. “Mine field!”

“Got something?” demanded the Major.

“Not a mine field,” Wilson corrected. “We could fix it for those brutes to blow themselves up, all right, but they’d take the ship with them. However, a sonic barrier now—”

“Run it around the ship outside your work field—yes!” The Major was eager again. “Would it take long to get it in?”

“We’d have to bring a lot of equipment through. Say a day—maybe more. But it is the only thing I can think of now which might work.”

“All right. You’ll get all the material you need—on the double!” promised Kelgarries.

Wilson chuckled. “Just like that, eh? No howls about expense? Remember, I’m not going to sign any orders I have to defend with my h’feblood about two years from now before some half-baked investigating committee.”

“If we pull this off,” Kelgarries returned with convincing force, “We’ll never have to defend anything before anyone! Man—you get that ship through intact and our whole project will have paid for itself from the day it was nothing but a few wishful sentences on the back of an old envelope. This is it—the big pay-off!”

That was the beginning of a hectic period in Travis’ life which he was never able to sort out neatly in his head afterward. With Ashe and Ross he patrolled a wide area of hill and valley, keeping watch upon the camps of the wandering hunters, marking down the drifting herds of animals.

For two days men shutded back and forth and then erected a second time transfer within the valley of the smaller ship.

Wilson’s sonic barrier—an invisible yet nerve-shattering wall of high-frequency impulses—was in place around the ship. And while its signals did not affect human ears, the tension it produced did reach any man who strayed into its influence. The mammoth family withdrew into the small woodland from which they had come. The men working on the globe did not know whether that retreat was the result of the vibrations or not—but at least the beasts were gone.

Meanwhile more sonic broadcasters were set up on every path in and out of the valley, sealing it from invasion. Kel-garries and his superiors were throwing every resource of the project into this one job.

About the ship arose a framework of bars as fast as the men could fit one to another. Travis, watching the careful deliberation of the fitting, understood that delicate and demanding work was in progress. He learned from overheard comments that a new type of time transfer was in the process of being assembled here, and that one so large had never been attempted before. If the job was successful, the globe would be carried intact through to his own era for detailed study.

In the meantime another small crew of experts not only explored the ship, taking care not to activate any of its machines, but also made a detailed study of the remains of the crew. Medical men did what they could to discover the cause for the mass death of the space men. And their final verdict was a sudden attack of disease or food poisoning, for there were no wounds.

Three days—four—Travis, weary to his very bones, dragged back from a scouting trip southward and hunched down by the fire in the small camp the three field men kept on the heights above the crucial valley. The metallic taste in the air rasped throat and lungs when he breathed deeply.

For the past two days the volcanic activity in the north had become more intense. Once the night before they had all been awakened by a display—luckily miles away—during which half a mountain must have blown skyward. Twice torrents of rain had hit, but it was warm rain and the sultriness of the air made conditions now almost tropical. He would be very glad when that fretwork of bars was in place and they could leave this muggy hotbox.

“See anything?” Ross Murdock tossed aside the hide blanket he had pulled about head and shoulders and coughed raspingly as one of the sulphur-tinged breezes curled about them.

“Migration—I think,” Travis qualified his report. “The big bison herd is already well south and the hunters are following it.”

“Don’t like the fireworks, I suppose.” Ross nodded to the north. “And I don’t blame them. There’s a forest burning up there today.”

“Seen anything more of the mammoths?”

“Not around here, I was northeast anyway.”

“How long before they’ll be through down there?” Travis went to look down at the ship. There was a murky haze gathering about the valley and it was spoiling the clearness of view. But men were still aloft on the scaffolding of rods-hurrying to the final capping of the skeleton enclosure about the sphere.

“Ask one of the brains. The other crew—the medics-finished their poking this afternoon. They went through transfer an hour ago. I’d say tomorrow they’ll be ready to throw the switch on that gadget. About time. I have a feeling about this place….”

“Maybe rightly.” Ashe loomed out of the growing murk. “There’s trouble popping to the north.” He coughed, and Travis suddenly noted that the mat of wig was missing from the older man’s head. He saw that there was a long red mark which could only mark a burn down Ashe’s shoulder, crossing

(he white seam of an earlier scar. Ross, seeing it too, jumped (o his feet and turned Ashe toward the light of the fire to inspect that burn closer.

“What did you do—try to play boy on the burning deck?” His voice held an undernote of concern.

“I miscalculated how fast a stand of green timber can burn —when conditions are right. The top of a mountain did blow off last night, and that may have an encore soon. We’re moving down nearer to the transfer. And we may have visitors—”

“Hunters? I saw them moving south—”

But Ashe was shaking his head in answer to Travis.

“No, but we may have been too clever about rigging that sonic screen. Those mammoths have been holed up in a small sub-valley to the north. If the hell I’m expecting now breaks loose, sonics won’t hold them back, but breaking through such a barrier will make them really wild. They might just charge straight down through here. Kelgarries will have to try his big transfer and quick if that happens.”