Jack Chalker - Priam's Lens

As soon as Mogutu’s feet cleared the inner hatch, the ship closed, almost lenslike, and there was a hissing noise and the sounds of seals popping into place. Harker found the webbing and straps and managed to get himself at least reasonably supported, and there was a sudden bang and then the feeling of sharp acceleration. They were away before any of them could really think about it, which was just how N’Gana had planned it.

On the way down, though, there wasn’t much to do but think. The little boat itself was featureless, with only a very soft glow from a dim strip of light along the top to allow any sight. And there was nothing to see: just sterile walls that seemed extremely claustrophobic even to those who went out in environmental suits. They were going very fast, that was for sure, and there was almost no noise, not even a sound from any of the other compartments. It was eerie to have this free fall feeling cutting in and out now and not be able to hear anything but your own breathing—and, Harker admitted to himself, his suddenly quite rapid heartbeat.

Every nightmare suddenly flashed into his mind. What if the timing was off? What if the Titans detected the boat and followed it down? Or came to investigate it?

No, that wouldn’t be as much of a worry. They’d just throw that energy sucker they had and it would go very dark in here just before this thing crashed into the planet’s surface, killing all of them.

Just then the light did flicker, even go out for a second or two, giving him, and probably the rest of them, a near heart attack.

Now there was a distant roaring sound, and the feeling of being bumped all over. Everything moved, everything moaned and groaned and shook for what seemed like forever. I’ll never curse a landing craft descent again, he told himself. Not after this.

As suddenly as the rough ride had started, it now stopped, but now he felt himself being pulled to the front of the compartment. As this pull grew and grew, many more bumps and bangs sounded inside, making it nearly impossible not to get some bruising against the bulkhead.

The landing was one big terrific bang! So loud and so rough was it that for a moment he was sure they had crashed. It took all his training to tell himself that if in fact they had crashed he wouldn’t have had the time to think it.

There was suddenly full gravity and the sound of air depressurizing and in moments the opening was clear once more. He didn’t need any encouragement; he struggled to free himself of the webbing and straps and then pushed out of the craft as quickly as possible, dropping a meter or so into sandy soil. It was quite dark, but there was enough light to see, barely, what was going on near you.

He felt like he’d been in a wreck of some kind. He was dizzy, disoriented, and fighting stronger gravity than he’d had to face in a while. He struggled to stand as he saw Mogutu and N’Gana both already on their feet—the former literally pulling Socolov and Chicanis from their compartments by their feet, the latter pulling duffel bags full of equipment from the two cargo points. He made it to N’Gana and was soon pulling things out as well. He couldn’t guess what some of it was—primitive weapons that could be used here, no doubt.

Everything on the sand, N’ Gana and Mogutu looked around. “Everybody out? Where’s Hamille?”

“Here!” the Pooka responded in that forced air whisper. “Barely.”

The colonel nodded. “Socolov?”

“Here!”

“Father Chicanis?”

“Here!”

He sighed. “Well, all right then. Stand away from the boat. If I know it’s empty, then it knows it’s empty!”

As if on cue, the lens closed up, there was a hiss of a seal, probably to preserve it, and then the thing, which was only a dark hulk in the dim moonlight, seemed to virtually disappear. There was still a shape there, but it was dead, inert, even to look at in the dark. The effect was eerie—and lonely.

The colonel looked at his watch. It was a wind-up mechanical type that was still silent, with no telltale ticks. They all had one just like it, synchronized from the start. The dial was luminous, and they’d all charged theirs just to have use of it once down, although the lighting would fade quite quickly now. All the watches were adjusted to the Helenan day, which ran twenty-five hours fifty-one minutes twelve seconds standard. Since all planetary times were adjusted to a twenty-four-hour clock locally, that meant each hour was going to be roughly sixty-four minutes long, give or take. That wouldn’t disorient any of them.

“There’s some palms and brush for cover over there,” N’Gana told them. “Everybody carry something and let’s get away from this site just in case somebody comes looking.”

“I feel like I was in a building collapse,” Katarina Socolov complained.

“We all got bounced around, but it will pass,” the colonel responded. “Being face-to-face with Titans is more permanent.”

They got everything away, then broke off some large leaves and used them to wipe out the tracks from the now dormant little boat to the brush.

“Probably not good enough, but it’ll have to do,” Harker told them.

“Don’t worry about it,” Mogutu replied. “High tide comes almost up to this first line of brush. You can see the driftwood stacked up along here. In a few hours there’ll be no sign anybody was ever here, and in a few days even the boat will be hard to spot, just another piece of junk.”

“I want to get everything unpacked and sorted and repacked,” the colonel told them. “We’ll rest here until sunup.”

“Aren’t you afraid crossing over in daylight will make us sitting ducks?” the cultural anthropologist asked him, worried.

“It won’t make any difference to them when we cross, anymore than it would to us,” the colonel assured her. “We don’t have night limitations beyond a certain technological level that Mogutu and I have long since passed. They don’t use orbital satellites, since they already own the place and don’t seem to give a damn what might be left over crawling around on it. For us, making a crossing in two collapsible rafts is going to be a challenge no matter how much we’ve practiced. This is real ocean. Let’s at least see the immediate danger instead of worrying about theoretical ones.”

It was sound advice and hard to argue with.

“Once we sort our stuff and get our packs done, I’d suggest most of us get what sleep we can,” the colonel continued. “It’s going to be a very long and physically demanding day tomorrow.”

Some of their packs did contain weapons, but weapons, it seemed, from another age. Only N’Gana and Mogutu had rifles—sleek, mean-looking devices suited to a historical epic, along with crossed belts of clips of ammunition that seemed barbaric. Copper-tipped projectiles shot into people or things by using essentially the same principle used to make rockets. Ugly, messy, and not very sure, but using absolutely no electrical power of any sort or source.

Katarina Socolov and Gene Harker got equally wicked crossbows. “Not much at long range,” Mogutu admitted, “but at short range they’re very effective. There’s a small cylinder of compressed gas in each stock that accelerates the arrow, or bolt as it’s called, and gives it added range to maybe, oh, fifty to a hundred meters depending on the target. Even when you run out of gas cylinders, so long as you’ve got bolts, you’ll still have a weapon that can handle twenty, thirty meters sure. Ask the doc for sighting—it’s her weapon, basically. It’s pretty easy, though.”

Harker sat down next to the woman, who was checking her own crossbow out. “You actually good with this?”