Кристофер Банч - The Wolf Worlds

Ida did the only thing she could and forced the Cienfuegos into a 10-degree nose-down attitude.

The ship plowed into the lake, slashing out a huge, watery canyon.

And Sten was back on Vulcan, running through the endless warrens after Bet, Oron, and the other Delinqs. The Socio-patrolmen were closing in on him and he shouted after his gang to turn and figtit. Help him.

Something stung at him beyond dream-pain and Sten was clawing his way back up into bedlam. Every alarm on the ship was howling and blinking.

Doc was standing on Sten's chest, methodically larruping him across the face with his paws. Sten blinked, then wove up to a sitting position.

The other Mantis soldiers were scrambling around the room, in the careful frenzy that is normal Mantis-emergency.

Alex was lugging gear to the open port—wrong, Sten realized, it was a gaping tear in the ship's side—and hurling it out into bright sunlight. Bet had the tigers out of their capsules and was coaxing the moderately terrified beasts out of the ship. Ida was piling up anything electronic that was vaguely portable and self-powered.

Alex lumbered over to Sten and slung him over one shoulder. With another hand he grabbed Sten's combat harness and rolled through the tear in the Cienfuegos' side.

Alex dumped Sten on the pile of packs and went back for another load. Sten staggered to his feet and looked at the Cienfuegos . The ship was broken almost in half longitudinally, and various essentials like the winglets and landing struts had disappeared into the lake mud. The Cienfuegos would never fly again.

Sten battled to clear the fog from his brain, trying to conjure up a list of the supplies they'd need. He stumbled toward the rent in the ship.

"Wait. We should—"

But Alex ran out with more gear then spun Sten around, turning him away. "W should be hurrin", lad. Tha wee bugger's aboot t'blow."

Within seconds, the team was assembled, packs shouldered, and stumbling up the low clifflet.

They had barely passed over its crest when, with a rumble that echoed around the vast crater walls, the Cienfuegos ceased to exist save as a handful of alloy shards.

THE EGG-SHAPED CRATER they had crashlanded in was huge, almost seventy-five kilometers long. The lake itself filled about half of the area, even though it was obviously drying rapidly, from the "big end" of the egg toward the "point," where Ida had glimpsed a break in the crater's walls.

The ship had cashed it in about ten kilometers from the gap, leaving the team with a nice hike to clear their still muddled brains.

By now they'd taken stock of their situation, which bore a close resemblance to dismal. They'd lost almost all their gear in the wreck, including emergency protective suits and breathing apparatus. They did have their standard ration/personal gear/water filtration packs that, rumor had it, no Mantis soldier would walk across the street without.

The arms situation was equally bleak. The only weapons they'd brought out were their small willyguns, a sufficiency of the AM 2explosive tube magazines for those guns, and their combat knives.

No demo charges. No hand-launched missiles.

A slackit way f'r a mon, Alex mourned to himself. Ah dinnae ken Ah'd ever be Alex Selkirk.

"Does anyone have any plans?" Bet asked mildly as she pushed her way through a clump of reeds. "How the clot are we gonna get off this world?"

"Plans could be a bit easier if Ida would tell us where she committed that landing."

"Beats me," the heavyset woman growled. "If you recall, I didn't have much time for little things like navigation."

"Regardless," Bet put in. "It's all your fault."

"Why?"

"It always has to be somebody's fault," Bet explained. "Imperial Regulations."

"An' who better'n the wee pilot?"

Alex should have kept his mouth shut. It had teen a very long day for Ida, and she decided the joshing was no longer funny. She turned on Alex.

"I'd push your eyes out," she said, "except it'd only take one finger, you bibing tub of—"

And Sten stepped in before tempers could in fact heat up. "Words. Just words. They don't cross klicks."

"Leave them be," Doc suggested. "At the moment, a little spilled blood would cheer me enormously."

Alex whistled suddenly. "Willna y'have a lookit this!"

They'd broken out of the reeds and were crossing an open section of terrain. Here the ground had once been covered by fine, volcanic ash, which had hardened over eons into solid rock.

Alex was pointing at a cluster of enormous footprints, bedded deeply into the rock surface. Sten followed the prints with his eyes: They came out of what must've been the lake's edge, moved about twenty meters along it. then the being who had made them stopped for a moment—the prints were deeper there. Then they turned, hesitated as if the being had looked at something, then went on, disappearing gradually.

Sten stood in one of the humanlike prints and raised an eyebrow. It was at least twice as large as his own foot.

"I hope we don't meet his cousin," he said fervently.

Ida turned her little computer on, measured the rock. She laughed and snapped it off again.

"You're safe," she said. "Those footprints are at least a million years old."

Sighs of relief all around.

"I wonder who they were?" Bet asked.

"The People of the Lake, obviously," Doc answered.

Alex gave him a suspicious look. "An" how w'ye be knowit thae, y' horrible beastie?"

Doc shrugged his furry shoulders. "What else would a being call itself if it lived on the shores of a lake this size?"

"Doc," Ida said, "if I were a gambling woman—which I am—I'd say you just outfoxed yourself. You couldn't possibly know something like that."

Everybody chortled in agreement.

Doc trudged on without comment.

The spectacle from the top of the low rise was interesting enough, Sten admitted as he frantically scrabbled the willygun off his shoulder.

First was the slow descending of the crater walls as the crater opened out to flatlands and brush.

Second were the tiny thatched knots of huts scattered around the crater's opening—possibly two or three hundred of them, clustered in knots and hidden on tree cover.

But far more significant was the solid wall of warriors. Lined up, almost shoulder to shoulder, were hundreds of beings, each nearly three meters tall. Evidently Ida was wrong and the beings that'd left the mooseprints in the rock were still alive and quite healthy.

Also hostile.

They were huge, slender creatures, with straw-colored skin like the savannah around them. They wore bright-colored robes, caught at one shoulder with elaborately carved pins.

And each was armed with a spear that towered even higher than himself.

"What was that you said about being safe, Ida?"

"I haven't been calling them very well lately, have I?"

"What do we do?" Bet asked.

"I think somebody's coming to tell us." Sten nodded in the dierction of one warrior who was advancing up the hill.

Guns came up, level.

"Put 'em down," Sten hissed. "We don't want to look threatening."

"Threatenit? Ah dinna ken who threatenit who, Ah must mention."

The being stopped about ten meters away. Closer up, he was even more formidable. His height was accented by an impossibly long, narrow face, with flowing, feathery eyebrows and hair greased high into a tan helmet shape. He was carrying a bundle of what appeared to be weapons.

The group jumped involuntarily as he hurled the bundle toward them. It dropped in front of Sten.

"/Ari!cia! /Ari!cia!" the being shouted, pointing at a low grove of trees lining one side of the hill.