Andre Norton - Postmarked the Stars

“What do you want?” demanded one of them.

“Just out—off-world. We have a spacer we can lift in, but we need time to reach her—and we need transportation—a flitter.”

“So? Well, we don’t have one,” countered the settler. “And we can’t make one out of stones—”

“Give us a truce,” returned the other. “We call off the beasts, send them in another direction. There’s a broadcaster to the north they’ll drift to if we switch off ours. And we’ll send in a com for help. Whoever comes will see this wreck and set down by it. We’ll take over. Oh, not with blasters—with tanglers. Then once we’re out of here, you’re free. All we need is that flitter. We would have taken this one if it hadn’t fouled that blasted robo. You stay where you are, quiet and peaceful. Don’t try any tricks until we get the flitter. Then we’ll go—”

The settler turned his head to his companion. Dane saw their lips move but could not hear even a whisper of speech from where he lay.

“What about them?” The settler pointed to the wreck and Dane.

“They stay here until the flitter comes. After that you can have them. And to show you we mean what we say, we’ll call off the beasts, hold them back. If you agree, that is.”

“We’ll talk it over—” The settlers’ spokesmen withdrew, not turning their backs on the enemy, but edging along until they disappeared behind boulders large enough to give them cover.

The others tramped back, though they took no precautions against fire from the stones. Something beside the fury of pain moved in Dane. He understood the terms of the truce, but it did not mean much to him personally. Only a dim sense of alarm awakened. It was clear that the settlers did not trust these men, but would they agree? And if they did—

Bait! The explanation rang in Dane’s mind as if it were an alarm to awaken him to what this might mean in terms of his own survival. The fragments of talk he had heard on his first regaining consciousness made sense. He—the others who survived the crash—were to be left here as bait!

Another flitter might set down to give them aid. If the beasts had been called off and there was no sign of enemy activity, that could work. But suppose that the men among the stones made no move to warn off the newcomers—the trap could spring shut at once.

But would the strangers, once they had their means of transport, merely withdraw? Dane fought the steady throb of pain in his head and tried to think more clearly. Let the settlers believe that, and they were fools.

On the other hand, they were not well armed, and the robos were running down. The one that had been whirling back and forth behind the wreck of the flitter was just coming to a stop. It gave one or two more flails of its arms; then froze pointing straight out, as if to push away an enemy it could no longer attack.

So without blasters, with their robos run down, they would be easy meat for the monsters. And the refugees might just be desperate enough to take a chance at a bargain, believing that they could not be any worse off and that it might save them. Dane’s need to warn was giving him a kind of strength now. He tried to move, at least one hand. It came up slowly until he could see it hanging limply on his wrist, as if it were not his but another’s. Now he turned his will on his fingers. They were numb, without feeling, but they did move as he ordered.

Being able to wave a hand was not what he needed now, but more, much more. He concentrated upon sitting up. But when he raised his head from whatever slight support it lay upon, the world whirled in a spin about him, and he nearly blacked out again.

So he lay quiet, using what strength he had to move his other hand, one foot a little, then the other. At least he did not seem to have any broken bones so far. And the numbness was wearing out of the hand. Perhaps the knock on the head and a general drastic bouncing about was all the damage he had suffered,

“Do you think they’ll agree—”

Dane subsided at the sound of that voice, behind and quite close.

“What choice have they? After those robos short out, the beasts will swarm at them. They’re not that stupid. Let them take a little longer to argue about it, and then give them the ultimatum—now or never!”

“How long do you think we’ll have to wait for a flitter?”

“Well, that one bunch got away, and these came prepared for a pickup. Manifestly they knew what they had to do. So somewhere the alarm has already gone out. And Dextise got a message from the port. The Free Traders seem to have done enough talking to impress Largos and the Patrol commandant.”

“I thought Spuman was handling that so well—”

“He had it all tied up until this last shipment blew it. Grotler couldn’t have made more mistakes if he were deliberately trying to foul jets. A good thing he didn’t finish the voyage alive. Dextise would have taken him apart bone and muscle and fed the remains to one of his pets. This may well have finished the whole operation. It will if Spuman can’t use the Trosti cover. One man—just one man—plays it stupid, and we lose three years of work! And maybe the big cover into the bargain.”

“Grotler must have been sick. He died, didn’t he, during takeoff?”

“Let us hope that part of the story is straight. If he was helped out of this universe, then matters may be even worse than they seem. No, Dextise has the right of it now—cut our losses here, get off-world, and let these bird-tenders argue it out with the big ones. Dextise will turn on the agitators to send the monsters crazy and spread ’em out. The settlers will be so busy jetting around to pull their own people out of the jaws of this and that from Dextise’s pens that we’ll have time to cover our trail a little. You’ll learn there comes a time when you sometimes have to write off an operation.”

“You think this might blow the whole Trosti deal?”

“Who knows what the Patrol is going to find when it noses around? We could maybe have covered up Grotler and the Free Trader if that ranger and the traders hadn’t come snooping around, and if they hadn’t broken the force field and let the big ones out. Nothing to do after that but try to control them. And we couldn’t because of some counter call to the north.”

“Grotler’s?”

“What else? The trader didn’t bring it in. Last we heard from Spuman, they admitted they landed it in an LB somewhere in the wilderness and planted it where they thought it would be safe until some tech saw it. By the fourteen horns of Mablan, this thing fell apart right there and then! We tried to head them off, and what happens? We run into this—”

“Dextise said wipe ’em out. Let the rangers think the beasts did it.”

“I know, I know. Then what happens? Some of them get away! So then we have to wait around to make sure these won’t talk if help comes—and we lose a flitter. If you want to take a crawler back when you know some one of the beasts can open one of those like an E-ration tube and have you out as if you were rations—”

“So now we hope for another flitter.”

“Can you think of a better way? Eilik has killed the interference. He’s sending an SOS through on the port reading, purposely making it weak. Between here and the port, there’re four or five big holdings. Any one of them might respond—that’s settler custom. So we get a flitter, and then we turn the agitator on high, and with their robos not functioning, Dextise will still get his wish—nothing left alive to talk.”

Though there were still missing pieces in the ugly pattern, it made sense for Dane, more than anything had since he had seen the dead man in his bunk. Just as he had feared, these strangers had no intention of keeping their part of the bargain. How could he get a warning to the men at the stones?