James White - The Escape Orbit

It noted the ship crash-landed and toppled onto its side, observing and relaying back the fine details of the buckled stabilizer which must have given on landing, the partly opened airlock and sprung plating which steamed faintly with escaping chlorine, and the slit in the nose where the C-7 blaster hadn’t closed properly. And there were the smoking remains of the farmhouse close by, whose occupants were no doubt the indirect cause of the surrounding devastation, which had been set on fire by its tail-flare.

So far the data was utterly corroborative material for the telescopic observers in the guardship. But suddenly the probe opened out like a flower with super-sensitive vision, sound and analysis equipment, in effect subjecting the area to a microscopic as well as a telescopic examination.

Such an examination could not be allowed to continue.

A lone figure came staggering out of a patch of unburned vegetation some fifty yards from the probe. His body was terribly burned and bleeding from wounds inflicted by sharp branches, even his leather harness was charred and cracked by the heat, and from his mouth there came a steady, high pitched moaning that was a continuous low scream. He carried a club in the shape of a heavy table leg, and when he saw the landed probe he screamed harshly and came stumbling towards it.

In actual fact Briggs was suffering no discomfort at all. His ghastly appearance was due solely to imaginative makeup, his club was a very carefully fashioned table leg weighted and balanced to inflict the maximum damage and he had landed one of the easiest jobs in the whole operation simply through his acting ability. He was supposed to disable the probe so that the Bugs would be thrown back onto the resources of the telescopes on the ship and their own unaided eyesight when they landed later—if they landed later. So dutifully, almost gleefully, Briggs set about battering the probe into scrap, hamming the part of a poor, pain-crazed prisoner for all he was worth.

But he must have been a little too enthusiastic in his use of the club. The battering must have opened a path between the Probe’s fuel tank and the still red-hot venturis. There could only have been a few ounces of fuel remaining in the tank, but it was enough. There was a sudden flare, a concussion which made the whole dummy jerk around him, and when he reached the periscope Warren could see that there was very little left of Briggs or the probe.

Warren settled back for another period of waiting, and thinking.

Vitally important, but safe, was how Warren had described the assignment to Briggs. The probe should be given just enough time to report on the desolation around the site, the absence of any possibly dangerous groups of prisoners, of harmful activity, of anything except burning, smoldering vegetation and a ship which had crash-landed and was leaking chlorine. Then it would have to be disabled so that the small sounds made by the hidden assault groups would not be picked up. It was not expected that the Bugs would booby-trap the probe, since it would be much simpler to drop a bomb on the area if their suspicions were aroused. Briggs had agreed that all this was so, and his expression had reminded Warren of the time when this same Briggs had shown him how to swing a hammock where the Battlers couldn’t reach it and Warren had nearly hung himself on the safety rope—the expression of a man trying hard not to laugh…

The time dragged past and the sun beat down on the site and on the metal dummy. Inside the dummy the heat was unbearable and inside the suits it was even worse. Kelso, Sloan and himself were now lying prone with a suit technician attending each of them. The technicians had removed the gauntlet sections of the battledress and placed their hands in small pans of water, indicating that they should lift them in and out at intervals. He also kept wetting down the accessible portions of their fishbowls. Evaporation from their hands and helmets was supposed to cool them and avoid heatstroke, but Warren was convinced that the water treatment’s effect was chiefly psychological.

Above them, invisible in the sunshine, the Bugs should have made their decision—the only decision possible to them if they had any decent feelings at all. The accidental destruction of their probe should not have aroused suspicion, considering the circumstances, and the shuttle should already be on the way down to rescue the survivors of the crash-landed ship—some of whom must be alive to judge by the devastation surrounding it! But something might have made them suspicious, or perhaps they were too cowardly to send a rescue party, and a missile was on the way down instead to ensure that one of their ships did not fall into the hands of the prisoners…

Suddenly the suit technician waved and pointed upwards, but it was not until Warren reached the periscope that the sound of the shuttle coming down got through his helmet. He didn’t see the landing because of the smoke and ash being blown through the gap in the plating where the periscope was set up, but he could tell that it was very close and the elation he felt was due only in part to the beautiful way things were working out. A contributory factor was his knowledge that, not soon but in the foreseeable future, he would be able to get out of the pressure cooker he was using for a spacesuit…!

The clouds of smoke from the many small fires started by the landing served to hide the movements of the ground assault men, from the eyes on the ship as well as those in space, as they took up their positions in the unburned cover around the edge of the Escape site. Some small trees fell, stirring up more smoke. In actual fact they were being pushed over and damp grass and twigs at hand for the purpose were being used to produce the smoke—the idea being to accustom the Bug rescuers to falling trees and sudden, dense clouds of smoke. They might be frightened by these effects, but the whole area was smoldering and constantly being reignited by sudden puffs of wind—so that they should not be suspicious of them. And when the smoke was allowed to clear temporarily the shuttle could be seen standing about one hundred yards from the dummy with the burned farmhouse almost directly between them.

It wasn’t an ideal position for the ambush, Warren thought, but it could have been much worse.

With gestures which were an improbable combination of salute, cheery wave and thumbs up sign, Kelso and Sloan disappeared into the mouth of the tunnel heading for Number Two Attack Point, which was very nearly to windward of the shuttle’s position and from which the main body of commandos would be able to approach the ship under cover of smoke. At Warren’s signal the suit technician stopped pouring water over him and began pounding on the interior of the metal hull with a piece of wood. It was a slow, irregular beat, not very loud but still capable of being heard all over the Escape site, and it was the sort of noise which might very well be made by someone trying to attract attention when radio or other means of communication were impossible. That would be how the Bugs in the shuttle would regard it, Warren told himself. And later, if the pounding should vary in beat or volume they should regard it as a sign of impatience or desperation on the part of the survivors and not as instructions going out to the assault group via drum-talk…

The shuttle’s lock swung suddenly open and the ladder with its oddly shaped rungs and stubby handrail came telescoping down. A billow of smoke from the fires behind Number Two rolled past the enemy ship and when it cleared there were two Bugs on the ladder. A few seconds later there were four, all descending as quickly as was possible for that particular life-form to move. Excitement as well as heat made Warren’s mouth go dry.