Andre Norton - Postmarked the Stars

Some of the work force had rallied quickly enough to trigger the robos in the fields to cover their retreat, and the settlers had broken into several groups. The ones reaching Cartl’s had luckily been close enough to the flitter park to fight their way there. But even then, they were not to escape easily, for the monsters were only the first wave of that hideous army. Behind were men, and they had used blasters, though from several accounts, mainly one from the men, the strangers had been both driving on the monsters and defending themselves from them.

A flitter had come to hover over the vehicle park, and a line of monsters had trailed along behind it, almost as if led on a leash. There had been a fight, two of them. And two parked flitters had been smashed past getting into the air, so the settlers’ first plan for evacuating this party to Cartl’s and then reaching one of the other isolated groups had failed.

“Got them then—” one of the men wearing a bandage down his left arm, strapped to his body, said. “Vanatar had a burner mounted on a crawler and was going to use it on thick brush. Yashty and I reached that. Got that sky-scum in the center. Then Cartl’s ship came in so we could take off with the women. I wasn’t much use with the arm, and Yashty got a knock on the head, but together we could make one pilot. Asmual had taken a nasty one and was laid out proper. So Thanmore said for us to get out while the air was still clear. They would hold the park with Cartl’s men and maybe get that crawler with the burner started so it could make it to the upside. We could still hear them going at that, so we knew some of our people reached it. But even if they hold out a while, they can’t do it forever. They have the robos for their main defense and a small burner, but not much else.”

“How many of you reached there?” the ranger wanted to know.

The man shook his head. “No telling. We were the largest group, most all women and children. I saw three—three at least get it from those devil things. And two were burned down at the yard before we wiped out that air scum.”

“This upside—” Meshler interrupted. “Where is it in relation to the park?”

For a moment the man shut his eyes, as if trying to mentally picture the refuge site. Then he answered, “South a field and then east. It’s a big outcrop of rough rock. Vanatar thought it could be made into an extra-secure roost, and he ordered us not to blast it out. It’s the best defense they could find there.”

“No flitter landing near it?”

The man shook his head. “Only in open ground, and there you’d have to fight off those things. If they haven’t overrun the rocks—”

“Could your men get out if a flitter went on hover and we used air rescue belts?” persisted the ranger.

“I don’t know.”

The technique the ranger suggested was a tricky one. Dane had seen it done at training stations, but the Queen’s men had never had to put it into practice. And did the settlers have the proper tackle?

His question was put into words by the other more lightly wounded man.

“You have a rescue flitter here? You’d need the belts and shock lines. And you’ll have to hover low. They’re using blasters, and if you got down to the right level, one sweep would cut a belt rope.”

“We can set the hover on low.” Meshler sounded confident, but Dane thought this the wildest suggestion yet. He looked about the room. Tau was busy with the badly wounded man. His place would certainly be here. The three who had come in with the refugee flitter were in no state to go back, and Cartl might have a relapse if he made such an effort at present, which meant that the rescue mission would fall on two of them, Meshler and himself.

The ranger did not ask for volunteers. He put them all, save Tau, to work, improvising the equipment needed. They had finally a bulky belt, plus a double-woven steelion rope and a pulley hoist, which occupied so much of the interior of the flitter that Dane could not see how they could take off more than two, or at the most three, of the refugees at a time. In addition, they had to use the slower flying cargo flitter in order to rig such an installation at all. And even Cartl warned them that any overload of weight on hover might break that down.

But at dawn they took off, Meshler again as pilot, Dane and the brach, who at the last minute added himself to their company, housed in the stripped rear beside the hoist.

“This is bad.” Dane tried to urge the alien to stay behind. “We go into much danger.”

“Go with you, come with you, always, with you go our own place,” the brach stated firmly, as if in Dane alone he had any hope of returning to his mate and family. And knowing how the alien’s talents had helped them in the past, Dane could not have him put out bodily.

With the directions of the refugees for a guide, Meshler pushed the flitter at the top speed that the lumbering craft could maintain. Behind them the people of Cartl’s holding were preparing for a state of siege, while Cartl himself had gone back to the com, though he seemed to have little faith in the experiment he tried.

There was no storm, but the day was gray, and the sun was a very pallid spot of light, well veiled by clouds. Save for their two blasters, they carried no arms. And Dane tried not to imagine what would happen if the enemy had captured one of the burners and turned it aloft to singe out any attempt at rescue.

When they came in over the fields where Vanatar and his people had been clearing, the ragged scars of the interrupted work were beacon enough. The tangle of the flitter the refugees had brought down lay in a burned-out mess, eclipsing in part two crawlers it had crashed upon.

From that wreckage a lance of blaster fire shot at their own craft. Friend believing them enemy, or enemy trying to blast any rescue attempt? At any rate, that spear of light had come from a hand weapon, lacking power to reach them, though were they to descend, it might make a direct hit—

Meshler brought the flitter around, away from the park. The machine, never meant for fast or limited space maneuvering, needed all his attention at the controls. But it was the brach who gave them their lead.

“Much fear—pain—that way—” He pointed with his nose. Dane interpreted, and Meshler headed in the new direction.

They caught sight of the rocks. They looked from above almost as if they were some artificial erection rather than natural outcropping, though they stood in no pattern, only raised a mass of erosion-pitted stone skyward.

Meshler guided the flitter in closer. Halfway across the roughly cleared field was an overturned crawler. From it pointed the ugly snout of a burner, and where that lay against the soil, there was a long streak of black and smoking soil ribboning from it. Apparently the machine had been overturned with the burner going at full blast, and that had remained on to sear and roast the ground until its heating unit was exhausted.

But it had taken toll before it had been defeated. There were three half-burned carcasses on its back trail, and all of them suggested that in life they had been monstrous. More nightmare things, however, were left to prowl around the rocks, though they did not essay to attack, mainly because scuttling back around the rocky outcrop were three robo clearers, their long, jointed arms with scraper and slasher attachments at ready, threshing the air in a whirl of threat.

Two more robos had suffered. One whipped around in a dizzy circle, two smashed arms trailing behind it, bumping on the ground, half the control box that served it for a head melted away. The other did not move. Apparently its progress circuits had been shorted in some manner, but it whipped and banged the ground in a frenzy.