Andre Norton - Galactic Derelict

“We aren’t down yet!” Ross didn’t lift his head and his words were sharp, as if perhaps he could insure their eventual safe landing by his very doubt of it.

“She brought us this far,” Renfry crooned. “She’ll take us the rest of the way. Won’t you, old girl?”

They met the jolt of the break into Terran atmosphere, accepted it, half numbed, still unbelieving. Ross released his hold on the chair, made for the well of the ladder.

“I’m going down.” He averted his eyes from the vision plate as if unable to watch any longer.

And suddenly Travis shared the other’s distrust of that window on space. He followed Ross, swinging down the ladder to their cabin, throwing himself prone in the bunk to await their landing— if there would be a safe landing.

The thin vibration of a take-off motor was nothing to the pressure of air against the globe skin now. It raised a hum which sang in their ears, through every atom of their tense bodies. All the waiting they had managed to put behind them was nothing compared to this last stretch they could not measure by any clock. The feeling that something might-would happen—to negate all their hard-won safety gnawed deep.

Travis heard Ross mutter on the other side of the cabin but could distinguish no words. What were they doing now? Racing night or day around the surface of their world, trying to home on the spot from which the alien journey tape had lifted them weeks ago?

Seconds crawled—minutes—hours…. One could measure this only by uneven breaths drawn with difficulty as the weight of gravity pulled once more. Were they now registering on radar screens, hostile and friendly alike, summoning a net of missiles to fence them off from the firmness of solid earth? Travis could almost picture the rise of such a bullet, trailing a spear tail of fire—coming in—

He cringed as he lay in the bunk, the soft padding rising about his gaunt body.

“Coming down.”

Had those words sounded through the ship’s com? Or were they only an echo of his own imagination?

He felt the pressure against the padding, the squeeze of chest and lungs, harder to bear because of his weakness. But he did not black out.

There was a jar, the ship rolled, settled slighdy aslant. Travis’ hands moved to the straps about him. There was complete silence. He was loathe to break it, hardly daring to move—somehow unable even now to believe that they were down, that under them must rest the brown soil of his own earth.

Ross sat up jerkily. Freeing himself from the protective harness of the bunk, he made for the door. He walked like a sick man, driven by some overwhelming force outside himself.

His voice came as a whisper. “Got—to—see….”

And then Travis knew that he must see also. He could not accept any evidence except that of his eyes. He followed Ross along the corridor—to the inner lock. And when the other fumbled at the closing, he. added his own strength to open it.

They went through the air lock, laid hold almost together on the outer port. Ross was shaking, his head hunched between his shoulders, his face gray and wet.

It was Travis who opened the door. They were facing east and the time must be early dawn, for there was a belt of shadow beneath the curve of the ship while on the horizon light banners spread pale gold. He dropped down, his eyes on that band.

“Company coming.” Ross swept out an arm. There was a soaring rumble of sound. A quartet of planes in formation cut across the light patch of sky.

There were lights flashing on about the ship—flooding away the shadows. Now Travis could pick out a buckled framework, signs of a disaster. And among the wreckage men were moving, drawing in to the star ship. But beyond them the sun was rising. His sun—rising to light his world! They had made it against all the stacked odds. Travis’ hand smoothed the skin of the globe beyond the frame of the open port, as he might have smoothed the arched neck of the pinto that had brought him through a grueling day’s ride on the range.

The sun was yellow on the distant hills. And those were made of the good brown earth of home!

ACE BOOKS, INC. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.

GALACTIC DERELICT

Copyright ©, 1959, by Andre Norton

An Ace Book, by arrangement with The World Publishing Company.

All Rights Reserved

Printed in U.S.A.