Ride the Star Winds (45 page)

Village called Melitus?
typed Grimes.

No information
, appeared the reply.

Map of Mount Melitus vicinity?

Not in library bank.

Grimes swore. “I should,” he said, “have brought along the atlas from my quarters.”

“It would have looked suspicious,” said Fenella, “if you’d been carrying it around with you.”

“I could have torn out one or two relevant pages,” said Grimes, “and put them in my pockets.”

“But you didn’t,” said Fenella.

“There are some maps in my cabin,” Maggie told them. “I’ll get them now.”

She spread them on the wardroom table. Grimes found the one he wanted, studied it carefully. When making his final approach, back in normal Space-Time, he would be shielded by the bulk of the planet from the probing radar of Aerospace Control. Unluckily he would be unable to make a quiet approach; the inertial drive unit of even a small ship is noisy; the only really heavy sonic insulation is to protect the eardrums of the crew. But there was a technique which he might employ, that he would employ if conditions were suitable. It was one that he had read about but had never seen used.

The map was a contour one. To the north Mount Melitus was steep, in parts practically sheer cliff. The southern face was sloped almost gently to the plain. There was a river, little more than a stream, that had its source about halfway up the mountain. A little below this source was the village of Melitus. But those contour lines . . . . The southern slopes were only comparatively gentle but there did not seem to be any suitable place upon which to set down a spaceship, even a small one. Grimes studied the map more carefully, took a pair of dividers to measure off distances. The river made a horseshoe bend just over a kilometer downstream from the village. The almost-island so formed was devoid of contour lines. Did that mean anything or was it no more than slovenly cartography? But the map, saw Grimes, was a Survey Service publication and the Survey Service’s cartographers prided themselves on their thoroughness. He hoped they had been thorough when charting the Mount Melitus area.

He said, “You know something of the layout of the ship, Maggie. See if you can rustle up some kind of a meal. Sandwiches will do. Shirl and Darleen—you’re army officers . . . .”

They laughed at that.

“But you know something about weapons,” he went on. “You must have received some instruction when you were in the Amazon Guard as well as dishing it out. Go through the ship and collect all the lethal ironmongery you can find and bring it here, to the wardroom. And you, Fenella, make rounds of the officers’ cabins and the storerooms and find clothing, for all of us, suitable for an uphill hike through rough country.

“I shall be going back to Control.” He rolled up the map that he had been studying, took it with him. “You know where to find me if you want me.”

Maggie brought him his sandwiches—rather inferior ham with not enough mustard—and a vacuum flask of coffee that was only a little better than the brew which they had become used to (but never liked) in the Palace. But he did not complain. (As far as Maggie was concerned he had learned, long since, that it was unwise to do so.) He munched stolidly while keeping a watchful eye on the instruments. One drawback of making an orbit around a planet with the ship’s Mannschenn Drive in operation is that there are no identifiable landmarks; the appearance of a world viewed in such conditions has been described as that of a Klein Flask blown by a drunken glassblower.

But the instruments, Grimes hoped, were not lying.

“What time—local time, that is—should we get there?” asked Maggie.

“Midnight,” replied Grimes. “Anyhow, that’s what I’ve programmed the little bitch for. How are the girls getting on with their fossicking?”

“Fenella’s found clothing for all of us—tough coveralls. Boots might be a problem. Shirl and Darleen have rather long feet, as probably you’ve already noticed.”

“On their own planet,” he said, “they’re used to running around barefoot. What about rainwear?”

“Rainwear? Are you expecting rain?”

“Rain has been known to fall,” he said. “Tell Fenella, when you go back down, to find something suitable. And the weapons?”

“So far a stungun, fully charged, with belt and holster, for each of us. Laser pistols likewise. And projectile pistols.”

He said, “We can’t load ourselves down with too much. We’ll take the stunguns and the lasers. We don’t want to do any killing.”

“Lasers kill people. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

“A laser is a tool as well as a weapon, Maggie. It comes in handy for burning through doors, for example. Too, it’s silent. Even more so than a stungun.”

“Shirl and Darleen have their own ideas about silent weapons,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“They found a dozen metal discs—what they’re
for
the Odd Gods alone know!—in the engineer’s workshop. They say that once they’re given a cutting edge they’ll be very nice throwing weapons.”

Grimes muttered something about bloodthirsty little bitches.

“I thought that you liked them, John,” said Maggie.

“I do. But . . . .”

“Haven’t you ever shed any blood during
your
career?”

“Yes. But . . . .”

But what he did not tell her was that he strongly suspected that the guards at Miletus, Ellena’s people, would be women. He derided himself for his old-fashioned ideas but still was reluctant to kill a member of the opposite sex.

Chapter 26

Krait
made her return to normal Space-Time, began her descent to the surface of New Sparta, to Mount Melitus. Maggie and Fenella were with Grimes in the control room; Maggie was there as a sort of co-pilot—after all, as a Survey Service officer, although not in the Spaceman Branch, she knew something about ship-handling—and Fenella was, as always, just getting into everything. Grimes had succeeded in persuading Shirl and Darleen to busy themselves elsewhere. Much as he liked them both this was an occasion when he could do without their distracting chatter.

As the little ship dropped to the nightside hemisphere, greater and greater detail was displayed in the stern view radar screen, in three-dimensional presentation. There was Mount Melitus, almost directly below
Krait
. Grimes applied a touch of lateral thrust so that the mountain was now to the south of the line of descent. Its hulking mass, he explained, would shield the village on the southern slopes from the clangor of the inertial drive.

“But our landing place,” objected Fenella, “
is
on the southern slopes. They’re bound to hear us sooner or later—and soon enough to be ready and waiting for us.”

“Not necessarily,” Grimes told her.

He made adjustments to the radar controls, increasing sensitivity. Clouds were now visible in the screen. The wind, as it should have been at this time of year, as he had hoped that it would be, was from the north, blowing over the relatively warm Aegean Sea on to the land, striking the sheer, northern face of the mountain and being deflected upward into cooler atmospheric levels.

He checked the state of readiness of the missile projector. It was loaded. He had seen to that himself. In the tube was a rocket with a Mark XXV Incendiary warhead. It was one of the viler anti-personnel weapons, one that Grimes, during his Survey Service days, had hoped that he would never have to use. Now he was going to use it—although not directly against personnel.

“Who are you going to shoot at?” asked Fenella interestedly. “I thought that the object of this exercise was to rescue Brasidus, not to blow him to pieces.”

“
What
, not
who
,” said Grimes. “I’m looking for a nice, fat cloud. One that’s just skimming the peak of the mountain on its way south.”

“Looking for a
cloud
? Are you out of your tiny mind?”

“The Commodore knows what he’s doing!” snapped Maggie. Then, “By the way, what are you doing?”

He laughed.

“I’m going to use a technique that was used, some years ago, on Bolodrin. A non-aligned planet, of no great importance, but one which both the Shaara and ourselves would like to draw within our spheres of influence. A humanoid population. An export trade of agricultural products. Well, there had been a quite disastrous planetwide drought. One of our ships—the Zodiac Class cruiser
Scorpio
—was there showing the flag. The Tronmach—it translates roughly to Hereditary President—appealed to the captain of
Scorpio
, as the representative of a technologically superior culture, to Do Something about the drought. Captain Samson went into a huddle with his scientific officers. They decided to seed likely cloud formations. With Hell Balls.”

“What’s a Hell Ball?” asked Fenella.

“What my missile projector is loaded with. It’s the pet name for the Mark XXV Incendiary Device, one of the more horrid anti-personnel weapons. Imagine an expanding vortex of plasma, superheated, electrically hyperactive gases. . . .”

“And did this bright idea work?”

“Too well. The drought was broken all right. Rivers burst their banks. Hailstorms flattened orchards. If the Shaara had grabbed the opportunity, sending ships with all manner of aid, Bolodrin would have happily become an Associate Hive Member. But they were slow off the mark and the Federation organized relief expenditures. Nonetheless relations were strained and Captain Samson suffered premature retirement. Mphm. Looks like a suitable target coming up now . . . . Range about fifty kilometers . . . .”

He busied himself at the fire control console, aligning the projector, setting the fuse of the warhead.

He pushed the button.

Only faintly luminous, the exhaust of the rocket was almost invisible.

The slow explosion of the warhead was not. In the center of the towering cumulus bright flame burgeoned and lightnings writhed, wreathing the mountain peak with lambent fire, lashing out to other cloud formations. A clockwise rotation seemed already to have been initiated, a cyclonic vortex. It was the birth of a hurricane.

Grimes could imagine what the conditions would soon be on the southern slopes of Melitus, the country normally protected from extremes of weather by the bulk of the mountain. There would be torrential rain and shrieking winds and a continuous cannonade of thunder and lightning, an uproar among which the arrhythmic clangor of a small ship’s inertial drive unit would go unnoticed.

He hoped.

With the controls now on manual he continued his descent. He skimmed the peak with less clearance than he had intended; a vicious downdraft caught
Krait
and had he not reacted swiftly, slamming on maximum lift, the ship must surely have been wrecked.

Then he was over the mountain top, dropping again but not too fast, maintaining a half-kilometer altitude from the ground. Sudden gusts buffeted the ship, tilting her from the vertical. A fusillade of hail on her skin was audible even through the thick insulation. Nothing, save for the diffused flare of the lightning, could be seen through the viewpoints. Even the radar picture was almost blotted out by storm clutter.

But there was the village . . . .

And the river . . .

Grimes followed its course to the horseshoe bend. It looked as it did on the chart. But even if the ground were level, what about trees? There had been no symbols indicating such growths on the map—but trees have a habit of growing over the years. He had hoped to be able to make a visual inspection before landing but, in these conditions, it was impossible.

He hovered almost directly over the almost-island, dropping slowly, keeping
Krait
in position by applications of lateral thrust, this way and that.

“Stand by the viewpoint, Maggie,” he ordered. “Yes. That one. If there’s a brief clear spell, if the rain lets up, tell me what you see.”

“What do you want me to see?”

“What I don’t want you to see on our landing place,” he said, “is trees. Bushes don’t worry me but a large, healthy tree can damage even a big ship sitting down on it!”

“Will do.”

And then she was back beside him.

“There was a break, and lightning at the same time. There aren’t any trees.”

“Landing stations!” ordered Grimes.

Krait
sat down hard, dropping the final two meters with her drive in neutral. She sat down hard and she complained, creaking and groaning, rocking on her tripedal landing gear, while shock-absorbers hissed and sighed.

Grimes unbuckled himself from his chair, then led the way out of the control room. In the wardroom Shirl and Darleen were waiting. On the table and on the deck were the articles of clothing that Grimes had specified—the coveralls, the raincapes and the heavy boots. Hanging on the backs of chairs were belts and holstered weapons.

Swiftly the five of them got out of their light clothing, pulled on the coveralls and the heavy boots. Luckily the ship’s equipment store had carried a wide range of sizes, so even Shirl and Darleen were shod not too uncomfortably. Grimes packed a rucksack with protective clothing for Brasidus, who would need this for the walk from the village to
Krait
. (Grimes hoped that Brasidus would be able to make the walk, that he would be rescued unharmed.) They belted on the weapons. Shirl and Darleen attached to their belts pouches with clinking contents. Grimes wondered briefly what was in them, then remembered the discs that the two girls had found in the engineer’s workshop.

They made their way down the spiral staircase to the airlock, the controls of which had been set to be operated manually. Grimes was not at all happy about leaving the ship without a duty officer but he had no option. He was the only real spaceperson in the party but, at the same time, he was the obvious leader of the expedition. And all that any of the women could do, if one of them were left in charge, would be to keep a seat in the control room warm.

He and Fenella were first into the airlock chamber. Grimes pushed the button that would open the outer door and, at the same time, extend the telescopic ramp. He was expecting a violent onslaught of wind and rain but his luck, he realized thankfully, was holding. The door was on the lee side of the ship. He adjusted the hood of his raincape, checked the buckles holding the garment about his body, then walked cautiously down the ramp. Away from the ship he began to feel the wind and, even through his layers of clothing, the impact of the huge raindrops. He could hear the thin, high screaming of the wind as it eddied around the metallic tower that was the ship, was blinded by a bolt of lightning that struck nearby and deafened by the
crack!
of the thunder. And what if
Krait
herself should be struck by lightning? Nothing much, he thought (hoped). With her stern vanes well dug into the wet soil she would be well earthed.