Space Gypsies (11 page)

“Aluminum! ” Howell grunted. “How did they ever work it, much less smelt it?”

His mind worked busily, but his eyes searched fiercely for anything that might possibly be alive in the slug-ship. He saw two shapes which he had to force himself to look at. They were crew-members of this ship. They were dead. It was not easy to believe that such creatures could make a ship like this. But, looking into it through a great gash, the ship was itself almost inconceivable.

There was no bare metal in sight. The whole ship was molded in plastic, with metal imbedded here and there for strength. There were differences in the plastic colours. There was a space where instruments were obviously to be read. The generators of lightning-bolts were in the bow, and both had exploded with devastating effect. With some idea of how they must work, Howell could see how an alien psychology had used principles familiar to humans to make devices that were almost unrecognizable. For example, there were no knobs or handles for controls. They were obviously sliding plates instead, with holes in the slides for digits to fit into. There were moulded recesses in the now-shattered walls which could have been bunks for repose, but it could be only a guess to say so. And nothing could be seen of the ship’s working mechanisms. They seemed to be buried deep in opaque plastic, and they wouldn’t be arranged as human equipment was placed at all.

Ketch coughed, stranglingly. Presently he said, “Chlorine, eh?”

“Chlorine,” agreed Howell. “They breathed it. Try to figure out how they’d build a civilization! With any moisture at all—and how could they avoid that?—any metal would be eaten up by the atmosphere they breathed! They had to coat all their metals with plastic to seal out the chlorine, or they’d rot immediately. But they made a civilization! They must have worked in gas-tight factories, or even in a vacuum.”

The two of them stared into the rent and riven slug-ship.

And something twanged behind them. It was like the deepest note of a piano or organ save that it died away abruptly. It was followed by the rasping, nerve-racked sound of a hand-weapon shooting itself empty.

They whirled. Within yards of them, something not human writhed convulsively, partly hidden under a tree toppled by the slug-ship’s weight. From the writhings, blaster-bolts went flaming in all directions. They stopped. The writhings continued, growing feebler—and then there was the dead body of a slug-ship creature. It had crawled or writhed to a distance at which it could not possibly fail to kill them both before either could turn. But now it was dead, and neither of them had killed it.

For long seconds there was silence, except for small cracklings and the diminishing hiss of steam.

Then a clear soprano voice somewhere spoke words. Human-sounding words, though they could have no meaning to Howell or to Ketch. Ketch took a step toward the sound. Howell stopped him.

“Hold it!” he commanded. “We invite creatures that kill slug-creatures. We don’t hunt for them. And they may be men.” He raised his voice: “We’re very much obliged. Will you come out and make friends?”

As he heard his own voice, and the inquiring tone, Howell realized that no slug-creature could have been as convincing. The soprano voice replied, promptly and briskly. Then what appeared to be a twelve-year-old boy stepped out from behind a standing tree trunk and grinned at them. The small figure carried what was almost certainly a weapon.

Howell felt the hairs crawl at the back of his neck. This was no situation for a child to be in!

He said sharply, “The devil! You killed that thing! But you shouldn’t be mixed up in this! Where are your parents? There’ll be a fleet—”

He stopped. Whatever he might say would be meaningless to this small and grinning apparition. There was a rustling, and a second child appeared, also apparently no more than twelve years old. A third. Grinning, they beckoned and led the way toward the
Marintha
.

They wore garments of green stuff which apparently wasn’t woven. The pattern was highly suitable for movement through jungle. There was nothing to be caught by protruding twigs or branches. There was a belt, to which not-readily-recognizable objects were hung. Howell had an instant’s bewildered memory of pictures projected during a college seminar on races of men. One had been of an imagined race once believed in on Earth—a race of miniature men and women. But these were children!

The port of the
Marintha
opened as they approached. Karen stared out of it, her eyes wide and astonished. Her fattier peered over her shoulder.

“What on Earth—?”

“This isn’t Earth,” said Howell. “These small characters killed the last of the slug-things as it was about to shoot Ketch and myself in the back from short range. They seem pleased with themselves. We’ve got to find their parents and warn them what’s on the way. And we’ll ask them for a little help—if they can give it.”

He began almost reluctantly to have hopes. But there were definite reasons against hoping.

“You thought there was something watching the yacht,” he added. “These are some of the eyes.”

The three small figures regarded Karen amiably. They spoke, using their own language with intonations and with gestures. It became clear that they wanted Karen and Breen, as well as Howell and Ketch to go somewhere with them.

“I think,” said Howell, “that we’d better go along. We owe them a small debt of gratitude, Ketch and I.”

Hesitantly, Karen disappeared. She came back with the weapon she’d carried in the fight outside the space-yacht, and with the heavier weapon her father had used. Breen’s expression remained blank and astonished, but he descended to the ground with her. The small figures set out briskly in the lead. The
Marintha
’s party followed them.

Ketch said in a peculiar voice, “These youngsters are trained. They aren’t even excited over having killed that creature. I’d say they must be a fighting breed.”

“They’re human,” said Howell drily. “That may explain it.”

Ketch said in sudden warmth, “You didn’t pick up any artificial radiation from the whole planet! But here they are! They’ve got weapons! They evidently know a lot about the slug-things! They aren’t even curious about them! So they’ve got a hidden civilization of a pretty high order!”

“They’re not much interested in the
Marintha
, though.”

“Maybe,” said Ketch with sudden enthusiasm, “maybe they make their cities underground. Then they wouldn’t leak signals to space. The slug-ships wouldn’t find them. Maybe all they need to handle the slug-ships is spaceships and weapons we can design for them! They’ve been driven into hiding. We could bring them out—”

“No evidence,” said Howell. “You’re guessing. But I doubt they’ve survived by hiding. The slug-ships travel in pairs, with one ready to run home if anything happens to the other. They wouldn’t do that if they’d driven this human race into caves! It wouldn’t be necessary!”

Karen said uneasily, “You said they killed a slug-creature when it was—”

“About to kill us. Yes,” he admitted.

He told her he wasn’t pleased with himself for being so incautious that but for a grinning child skipping on ahead, he and Ketch would have died as they looked into the shattered slug-ship.

She went pale and looked at him appealingly.

“I won’t take a chance like that again,” he said reassuringly. Then he reported, “Ketch is expanding. He’s been a big game hunter. This is big game hunting to the nth degree. I think he likes it.”

He hadn’t lowered his voice particularly, but ordinarily Ketch wouldn’t have heard. Ketch did, though, and said with an air of great significance, “We’re shipwrecked, and plenty! It’s not likely we’ll get home again, ever. I’m thinking ahead you’d better do the same.”

Howell shrugged. Ketch was acting oddly, but it could well enough be a reaction to the very unpleasant experience just past for all of them. So far as planning ahead was concerned, there are times when it is quite useless to make plans, but impossible to refrain. Right now the appearance of the three seeming children had changed the entire situation into something that couldn’t be guessed. But already Howell was trying to think ahead—quite uselessly, of course.

The
Marintha
was another problem. The slug-ships must use units equivalent to those of the space-yacht. Physical laws dictate the use of similar devices for similar purposes. The slug-ship would have the equivalent of a capacitor moulded somewhere in its massive plastic substance. But it might or might not be usable in the
Marintha
. Certainly to find it and dissect it out and test it and determine its properties, and then install it and modify the other units that had to work with it… It might be done, but it would take either exact information, known in advance, or time to work in that simply couldn’t be had. Long before such a thing could be done, there’d be a whining slug-fleet overhead, sending down lightning from the skies.

In short, there was no point in making plans for the
Marintha
. Howell grimly decided that the yacht could be written off.

And there was no point, either, in making plans based on contact with three children of a certainly human race, before the meaning of the contact was clear. Howell knew that he could hope, and the temptation was extreme. But he resolutely clung to his pessimism. On the whole, it was a sounder way to look at things.

They went on and on, toward the tip of the peninsula jutting out into a world-girdling sea. They picked their way through not impassable jungle-growths. Presently they came upon two other small figures, coming from ahead and moving smartly toward the
Marintha
and the alien spaceship. There was an exchange of greetings only, but it seemed that these two already knew what had happened. They spoke briefly to the three guiding small ones, and cordially if unintelligibly to Breen—whose eyes opened wider than before, if that were possible—and then to Ketch, and then to Howell and Karen walking together. The two small figures went on to the rear.

Karen said in an astounded whisper, “Did you see that? One of them had whiskers! Gray whiskers!”

Howell nodded stiffly. He’d seen, and all his speculations had to be revised again. The children were not children. But they were human. After a dozen paces his pessimism took firm hold of him again. He was partly amazed, and partly disappointed, but much of his feeling was simple, grim loss of any hope of real help from the other human race he’d only guessed at before. Because such miniature creatures—

“They’re grown-up, but tiny! ” protested Karen bewilderedly, “Are they midgets?”

“No,” said Howell drearily. “There were small races back on Earth. It’s reasonable enough! If their ancestors and ours built the rubble-heap cities together, and the slug-ships came out of nowhere, there were no survivors on most worlds. But on Earth, where there was no city, there were some few people—maybe hunting parties or yachting parties like ours. They weren’t spotted by the slug-ships, and we’re descended from them.”

“I know,” said Karen anxiously. “You’ve guessed at that before.”

Howell went on, doubting his own words:

“Somewhere else, on another world probably with heavier gravity than Earth’s, there were some other accidental survivors. Their home worlds were blasted. They didn’t know but that the murderers might come again. So they stayed where they were, They adapted to heavier gravity by not growing so large. They built up a civilization. And now they’ve run into the slug-creatures again.”

It was not an improvisation. He’d worked out a part of it for a guess at how the skeletons of human children could be found in a booby trap light-centuries from the part of the galaxy he knew. But he hadn’t guessed that they weren’t children. Now he spread out his hands.

“They can’t be doing so well,” he said, pessimistically. “The slug-ships travel in pairs, like patrols. One of each pair is ready to take back news of any concentration of human ships to wherever the slug-ships come from. That’s proof that the slug-creatures have the stronger fleet. They want to use it. The humans fight hit-and-run. They haven’t a war fleet that can stage a full-scale space-battle. You can tell it by the patrol system. They’re losing. And how can we get any help from men—miniature men!—who’re already losing and already spread out so thin that the slug-ships set booby traps for them? Maybe we can hope for no more than help in destroying the
Marintha
so there’ll be nothing to tell the slug-creatures that she came from where there’s still another race of men.”

Five paces. Ten. Twenty. Karen said, distressed,“If that—has to be done—what becomes of us?”

“That,” said Howell, with foreboding, “is what we’re going to find out now.”

The three seeming children shouted. There were cries in reply. The four from the
Marintha
came out of the jungle to a place where gigantic trees grew in a forest, widely spaced. Their foliage was dense, so that beneath their out-flung branches there was only twilight. Here there was no underbrush at all. And here, hidden to eyes aloft by the leafage, there were two metal globular ships. They were smaller even than the
Marintha
. The larger of the two was no more than thirty feet in diameter. And there seemed to be innumerable small folk moving about around them.

Allowing for the difference between globular spacecraft and caravans, and between mongrel dogs and the distinctly not-canine animals that moved assuredly about among the small people—allowing for such things, there lay before them a perfect gypsy encampment.

Communication, of course, was the immediate problem, and Howell was fiercely impatient with its difficulties. But gestures and smiles expressed welcome, which was an abstraction, and everybody concerned discovered unanticipated artistic gifts. They drew pictures which, with gestures and emotions expressed by tones of voice, were much more informative than would have been suspected.

Brisk male members of the small-man race, of whom some were almost up to Howell’s shoulder, settled down with him to exchange information concerning slug-ships and the art of war. It shortly appeared that the art of war consisted, on the part of the slug-ships, of dirty tricks whenever possible. For example, the booby trap on this world. The
Marintha
had been observed long before her landing by the booby trap. It had been viewed with skepticism, as a possible dirty trick. Even after its landing and after Howell had been seen marching to the booby trap, the fact that he was oversize for a human being of their experience cast doubt upon his authenticity. It had been suspected that he was a new type of space-suit designed to deceive members of the small-man race.