Бертрам Чандлер - Contraband From Otherspace

Grimes wished to be able to sweep past the enemy, invisible, no more than interference on their screens, and to make his landing on Stree before the squadron fell into its orbits. That was his wish, and that was his hope, but Branson, since the breakdown, did not trust his Mannschenn Drive unit and dared not drive the machine at its full capacity. He pointed out that, even so, they were gaining slowly upon the enemy, and that was evidence that the engineers of those vessels trusted their interstellar drives even less than he, Branson did. The Commodore was obliged to admit that his engineer was probably right in his assumption.

So it was when Corsair , at last, cut her Drive and reentered normal Space-Time that the blockading cruisers were already taking up their stations. Radar and radio came into play. From the transceiver in Corsair’s control room squeaked an irritable voice: " Heenteer tee Ceerseer , Heenteer tee Ceerseer , teeke eep steeteen ees eerdeered."

Ella Kubinsky, who had been throughly rehearsed for just this situation, squeaked the acknowledgement.

Grimes stared out of the viewports at the golden globe that was Stree, at the silver, flitting sparks that were the other ships. He switched his regard to Williams, saw that the Executive Officer was going through the motions of maneuvering the ship into a closed orbit—and, as he had been ordered, making a deliberate botch of it.

" Heenteer tee Ceerseer . Whee ees neet yeer veeseen screen een?"

Ella Kubinsky squeaked that it was supposed to have been overhauled on Tharn, and added some unkind remarks about the poor quality of humanoid labor. Somebody—Grimes was sorry that he did not see who it was—whispered unkindly that if Ella did switch on the screen it would make no difference, anyhow. The ugly girl flushed angrily, but continued to play her part calmly enough.

Under Williams' skilled handling, the ship was falling closer and closer to the great, expanding globe of the planet. But this did not go unnoticed for long. Again there was the enraged squeaking, but in a new voice. "Thees ees thee Eedmeereel. Wheet thee heell eere yee plee-eeng et, Ceerseer ?"

Ella told her story of an alleged overhaul of reaction drive controls and made further complaints about the quality of the dockyard labor on Tharn.

"Wheere ees yeer Cepteen? Teell heem tee speek tee mee."

Ella said that the Captain was busy, at the controls. The Admiral said that the ship would do better by herself than with such an illegitimate son of a human female handling her. Williams, hearing this, grinned and muttered, "I did not ride to my parents' wedding on a bicycle."

"Wheere ees thee Ceepteen?"

And there was a fresh voice: " Heeveec tee Heenteer . Wheere deed shee geet theet deemeege?"

"All right," said Grimes. "Action stations. And get her downstairs, Williams, as fast as Christ will let you!"

Gyroscopes whined viciously and rockets screamed, driving the ship down to the exosphere in a powered dive. From the vents in her sides puffed the cloud of metallic particles that would protect her from laser—until the particles themselves were destroyed by the stabbing beams. And her launching racks spewed missiles, each programmed for random action, and to seek out and destroy any target except their parent ship. Not that they stood much chance of so doing—but they would, at least, keep the enemy laser gunners busy.

Corsair hit the first, tenuous fringes of the Streen atmosphere and her internal temperature rose fast, too fast. Somehow, using rockets only, taking advantage of her aerodynamic qualities, such as they were, Williams turned her, stood her on her tail. Briefly she was a sitting duck—but Carter’s beams were stabbing and slicing, swatting down the swarm of missiles that had been loosed at her.

She was falling then, stern first, falling fast but under control, balanced on her tail of incandescence, the rocket thrust that was slowing her, that would bring her to a standstill (Grimes hoped) when her vaned landing gear was only scant feet above the surface of the planet.

She was dropping through the overcast—blue-silver at first, then gradually changing hue to gold. She was dropping through the overcast, and there was no pursuit, although when she entered regions of denser atmosphere she was escorted, was surrounded by great, shadowy shapes that wheeled about them on wide wings, that glared redly at them through the control room ports.

Grimes recognized them. After all, in his own continuum he had been the first human to set foot on Stree. They were the huge flying lizards, not unlike the pterosauria of Earth’s past—but in Grimes' Space-Time they had never behaved like this. They had avoided spaceships and aircraft. These showed no inclination towards doing so, and only one of the huge brutes colliding with the ship, tipping her off balance, could easily produce a situation beyond even Williams' superlative pilotage to correct.

But they kept their distance, more or less, and followed Corsair down, down, through the overcast and through the clear air below the cloud blanket. And beneath her was the familiar landscape—low, rolling hills, broad rivers, lush green plains that were no more than wide clearings in the omnipresent jungle.

Yes, it was familiar, and the Commodore could make out the site of his first landing—one of the smaller clearings that, by some freak of chance or nature, had the outline of a great horse.

Inevitably, as he had been on the occasion of his first landing, Grimes was reminded of a poem that he had read as a young man, that he had tried to memorize—The Ballad of the White Horse , by Chesterton. How did it go?

Yes, the end of their world had come for the Rim colonists, in this Universe, long ago.

And could Grimes and his crew of outsiders reverse the Judgment?

Slowly, cautiously Corsair dropped to the clearing, her incandescent rocket exhaust incinerating the grasslike vegetation, raising great, roiling clouds of smoke and steam. A human-built warship would have been fitted with nozzles from which, in these circumstances, a fire-smothering foam could be ejected. But Corsair’s builders would have considered such a device a useless refinement. Slowly she settled, then came to rest, rocking slightly on her landing gear. Up and around the control room ports billowed the dirty smoke and the white steam, gradually thinning. Except for a few desert areas, the climate of Stree was uniformly wet and nothing would burn for long.

Grimes asked Mayhew to—as he phrased it—take psionic soundings, but from his past experience of this planet he knew that it would be a waste of time. The evidence indicated that the Streen practiced telepathy among themselves but that their minds were closed to outsiders. But the saurians must have seen the ship land, and the pillar of cloud that she had created would be visible for many miles.

Slowly the smoke cleared and those in the control room were able to see, through the begrimed ports, the edge of the jungle, the tangle of lofty, fern-like growths with, between them, the interlacing entanglement of creepers. Something was coming through the jungle, its passage marked by an occasional eruption of tiny flying lizards from the crests of the tree ferns. Something was coming through the jungle, and heading towards the ship.

Grimes got up from his chair and, accompanied by Sonya, made his way down to the airlock. He smiled with wry amusement as he recalled his first landing on this world. Then he had been able to do things properly, had strode down the ramp in all the glory of gold braid and brass buttons, had even worn a quite useless ceremonial sword for the occasion. Then he had been accompanied by his staff, as formally attired as himself. Now he was wearing scanty, dirty rags and accompanied by a woman as nearly naked as he was. (But the Streen, who saw no need for clothing, had been more amused than impressed by his finery.)