Space Gypsies (7 page)

“Eventually,” admitted Howell, “they’re bound to, with crazy confident amateurs riding around the galaxy without the least precaution. Like us! Just a minute—”

He had his instruments ready. He threw a switch. He read and rearranged the instruments. He threw the switch yet again. He tried still another instrumental setup.

“Not good enough!” he said grimly. “Very good, but not the kind of goodness that would be of use to us.” Then he said, “But we don’t want to kill people. It’s powerful enough for that!”

He hadn’t really hoped the booby trap’s capacitor would substitute for the
Marintha
’s ruined one. But he couldn’t afford to overlook any chance, however slim. But it was still depressing to have even the most unlikely fail him.

He sat down drearily. His expression was very bitter. Karen said nervously, “You don’t think there can possibly be anybody—watching us?”

“Slug-creatures? No. They’d blast us aground as they tried to blast us in space.”

He stared apathetically at nothing. Pessimism overwhelmed him again. Karen tried something else, to rouse him.

“But we don’t really know… We assume that the slug-people are deadly and murderous. But they might assume that we are deadly and murderous! They might even have reason—”

“The booby trap answers that, Karen,” he said tiredly. “I don’t feel like talking. Do you mind?”

She was silent. Presently she went to the still-open port. She looked out unhappily for a long time. Something moved in the jungle nearby. She ran back to Howell.

“S-something moved!” she panted. “Really!”

He got up and went to the port. He looked out. Nothing stirred, but he did get the feeling that something watched him. After some moments he drew back and found a place where he could look out the port with a blast-rifle handy. Karen looked fearfully from him to the port and back again.

A very considerable time later, Howell stirred. He’d been lost in dread anticipations. But without realizing it he’d studied each envisioned disaster for that weak point which would make it possible for the disaster to happen. The feeling of frustration persisted. He couldn’t really imagine any replacement of the absolutely necessary capacitor, and therefore he couldn’t imagine flight from a part of space in which slug-ships set up elaborate booby traps. The one here hadn’t been set up to kill the company of the
Marintha
. It had been set up to destroy members of the race of which Howell could know only that it existed and used words, and that the skeletons of seeming twelve-year-old members were wholly human.

This was no clue as to how to communicate with this local race of human beings. There was no way to avoid discovery by a slug-ship actually on the way here now. The only subject left to think about was the obtaining of a high price for the murder of Karen and Breen and Ketch and himself. So he’d been thinking about that.

“I want some clothing,” he said heavily. “I want to make some dummy humans representing us.”

Karen stirred, relieved that he’d come partly out of what was almost pathological depression. She brought garments. Her father’s. Her own. Howell’s own.

Howell said, “We’ll stuff them with crumpled paper.”

He set to work and Karen joined him. It was a curious occupation for people under an effective sentence of death or perpetual imprisonment light-centuries from the worlds they knew. They were, in substance, hiding from creatures they’d never seen, but which would blast them on sight. They knew there was another race than the inimical one. But there was a war in existence of which their predicament was proof, and they would be blasted by any ship of either side because ships of either race might consider the
Marintha
a stratagem of the enemy. They had no weapons greater than those designed for game hunting. They were practically, game themselves. And Howell dourly fastened garments together and painstakingly stuffed them with crumpled paper to make them look like human beings. Karen, inwardly anxious and uneasy, helped as if it were the most normal of occupations.

“Something’s occurred to me,” said Howell, only a little less heavily than before. But even that slight change of intonation encouraged Karen. “We can’t get away from a slug-ship if there’s one handy—which there is. Especially we can’t get away from two. They’ve got overdrive, and we haven’t. They saw us and shot at us. They may know that we aren’t the enemy they carry artillery-sized blast-weapons to destroy—but they do know we’re not them. And so to them we’re enemies.”

“Yes,” said Karen. She showed him a dummy. “Do you think this is all right?”

“Probably,” said Howell. He went on. “If we’re enemies, they want to kill us. But our ship is peculiar to their eyes. They ought to want to know what we’re all about. We haven’t used a weapon against them, but they’re not sure we’re unarmed. In fact, they probably can’t imagine us as unarmed. So—in this particular solar system, what would they do?”

Karen looked at him. She and Howell had been almost continuously in each other’s society for three months. They were of suitable ages to find each other interesting. Under such circumstances, as normal individuals they’d tend either to dislike each other intensely, or else like each other very much. But in the present situation of the
Marintha
, they wouldn’t show their feelings. Not if they were Karen and Howell, at any rate.

Still, Karen acted as any girl would act when she wanted desperately to be the most important thing in a man’s life. She tried to be necessary to him, leaving to him the larger and more vital matters such as how they were to survive in this dangerous situation. Howell, in turn, acted as if the most important thing in his life were endangered—and it was: Karen could not but share in the fate of her father and Ketch and Howell. If they were killed, she’d be killed. So Howell devoted all his energy and much the greater part of his thoughts to trying to ensure that Karen might be made safe.

For that he’d performed every action since the first breakout in between-the-stars, when a slug-ship challenged the
Marintha
. Now he made dummies. But he felt that he had to explain.

“If a slug-ship comes to this solar system,” he said detachedly, “it will know about the booby trap here, or else it would try to land and murder the shipwrecked crew it would believe were calling for help. But suppose it comes here. It would see the
Marintha
—aground near the booby trap. It would be only reasonable to guess that we followed the message-beam to here—which we did. It should seem probable that some of us were killed by the booby-trap—which we very well could have been. If it could see our apparent corpses in the dead space, the fact that the
Marintha
remained aground ought to suggest that we all went to the booby trap to answer the supposed globe-ship’s calls for help, and all of us were killed.”

Karen considered.

“That’s the way we’d think,” she admitted. “But they might not think the same way. If they’re really an alien race, and not human at all, couldn’t their minds work quite differently from ours?”

“No,” said Howell flatly. “They might not feel like we do about innumerable things. They might react emotionally in ways we can’t imagine, But the purpose of intelligence or intellect in the human sense is to know and understand and make use of reality. And reality is a logical whole. To understand it, an intelligent race would have to think logically. So any alien race that develops a civilization will have to think very much as we do.”

He worked a few moments longer on the dummy he was stuffing with crumpled paper.

“Anyhow,” he said curtly, “I’m betting that they may decide that their booby trap killed us all off, and that we left a new arid interesting type of spaceship for them to study and speculate about. They ought to be very much interested in new kinds of spaceships! They ought to want to take the
Marintha
with as little damage as possible. They made a trap for their enemies—and got some of them. Maybe we can set a trap for them.”

He stood up and picked up the bulky but very light objects he and Karen had made together.

“The only bad feature,” he said thoughtfully, “is that even if we trap them, it may not do us a bit of good.”

He went out of the exit-port, carrying the dummies.

He made his way again to the dead area, having a great deal of trouble with his burden of stuffed figures. Trees tried to block the way. Brushwood plucked at the clumsy bodies which nearby were so unconvincing. There was one time when a vine entangled a dragging stuffed leg, and he had to put down the whole burden to clear it. Again he found himself surrounded on three sides by tree trunks too close to let him through. He had to retrace his steps and find a more open way.

He reached the killed circle. He went into it, dodging tree trunks and with his unwieldy burden scraped at by the brittle sticks which once had been underbrush. Presently he tripped, and looked down to see what he’d tripped on. It was a fine wire coated with transparent plastic like all the metal objects of the slug-ship culture’s making. It had undoubtedly communicated with a relay, which some hours earlier would have flashed a killer-field to murder him and re-kill anything within its range. Now the killer-field generating outfit was smashed, and an essential part of it lay useless in the
Marintha
’s engine room.

But the trip-wire was information Howell needed. It told him where the foremost member of a rescue party, marching toward a booby trap that had lured them here, would have released pure death upon himself and all living things nearby as a reward for his altruism.

So Howell put down, here, the dummy representing himself. It would be plainly visible from the sky. He went back and placed the others as if while following him they had all been killed. It was an admirable picture of what would have appeared if the
Marintha
had been a rescue ship lured to this place by the message-beam—as the
Marintha
had been—and if all its ship’s company had gone unsuspectingly to their fate.

Having accomplished this errand, Howell was more than doubtful of its usefulness. He went doggedly back to the still-living jungle he’d left. He was fully aware, now, of the mischances that could turn any stratagem into futility. But it suddenly occurred to him that he and the others of the
Marintha
Were practically inviting catastrophe. He was suddenly appalled by the idea of Karen being left alone in the yacht. There were adventure tape-dramas—mostly historical or period pieces—in which people did experience danger and face disaster. But they were make-believe. And for believability most of them were laid in earlier times when humanity was not—as it now believed it was—plu-perfectly safe.

The four of them, Howell reflected angrily, were like children who’d never been really frightened. They pretended delicious terror for the fun of it. When they encountered really alarming things, they tended to react like children who do not like the way a game is going. They tried to stop playing. That was certainly the case with Breen, and probably with Ketch. They were now looking over the rubble remainders of a long-shattered city. For the time being, they’d stopped playing at flight from a slug-shaped enemy spaceship.

Howell hurried back toward the yacht. Just past the edge of the dead area he passed the spot where he’d put the three small skeletons under a decorous cover of green-stuff. He’d had nothing then with which to dig a grave, and he had nothing now. But he wouldn’t have stopped anyway because he began to think of shocking omissions in their reactions to real danger. Karen was alone in the ship, right now. They hadn’t monitored the all-wave receiver. Howell had computed the position and course and hence the time of arrival of the slug-ship on its way here now. It shouldn’t arrive for some time yet; but it could have driven again, planning to use power for deceleration on arrival. It could turn up any instant! And Karen would be alone, because he’d been out setting up a scenic effect, and Breen and Ketch were out botanizing!

He was almost running when he caught the first glimpses of the yacht between tree trunks. At a hundred yards he shouted. He heard the clanking of the metal dogs that held the port shut and sealed it. The port cracked open, and. Karen peered fearfully out. An infinite relief and gratitude showed on her face, but she was terrified.

She couldn’t speak when he vaulted up to the then fully opened port. She clung to him. She’d been crying. She was still frightened.

“What’s happened?” he demanded fiercely.

It was singular that he held her close, and this was the first time they’d ever acted other than decorously, but it was not the occasion for romantic speeches. He kissed her and repeated as fiercely as before, “What’s happened? What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

“There’s a—whine in the sky,” she said shakily. “The—the receiver picked it up. I heard it! It’s like—what you said was a slug-ship…”

She didn’t try to release herself. He asked grimly, “How long ago?”

“N-not long. Maybe five minutes…”

“Then we’ve some time. If it was landing, it’d be down now. It’s making one orbit to slow down. A low orbit could take around ninety minutes. We’ve got to get Ketch and your father.”

He kissed her and moved toward the control room. He came back and kissed her again. He vanished. Karen put her hand to her throat. She’d been frightened. But Howell had held her close and kissed her, and now her fears were dissipated. The reason for them was in no wise diminished, but nevertheless her eyes shone a little. And it could have been said that any two people of suitable age, thrown together as they had been these past three months, would either dislike each other excessively or care for each other a great deal. Karen would have denied it. She was quite sure that if she and Howell had never known each other, and their eyes had met on a crowded street, they’d have known what she was now sure of.

Howell threw the switch of the yacht’s outside siren. Space-liners were not equipped with such gadgets as sirens, but yachts found them desirable. Landing as yachtsmen did on worlds only other yachtsmen frequented, there was need of an audible signal to guide exploring parties and hunters back to the little ships that went everywhere with no thought of danger.