The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (88 page)

Again, Deirut bent to his instruments. My God, how the thing moved! More than forty kilometers per second. Tape began spewing from the feedout: Mass 321.64 … rotation nine standard hours … mean orbital distance 58 million kilometers … perturbation blank (insufficient data) …

Deirut shifted to the filtered visual scanners, watched the companion sweep across the face of its star and curve out of sight around the other side. The thing looked oddly familiar, but he knew he could never have seen it before. He wondered if he should activate the computer's vocoder system and talk to it through the speaker embedded in his neck, but the computer annoyed him with its obscene logic.

The astronomical data went into the banks, though; for the experts to whistle and marvel over later.

Deirut shifted his scanners back to the planet. Shadowline measurement gave it an atmosphere that reached fade-off at an altitude of about a hundred and twenty-five kilometers. The radiation index indicated a whopping tropical belt, almost sixty degrees.

With a shock of awareness, Deirut found his hands groping toward the flip-flop controls. He jerked back, trembling. If he once turned the ship over, he knew he wouldn't have the strength of purpose to bring her back around. The push had reached terrifying intensity.

Deirut forced his attention onto the landing problem, began feeding data into the computer for the shortest possible space-to-ground course. The computer offered a few objections “for his own good,” but he insisted. Presently, a landing tape appeared and he fed it into the control console, strapped down, kicked the ship onto automatic and sat back perspiring. His hands held a death grip on the sides of his crashpad.

The D-ship began to buck with the first skipping-flat entrance into the planet's atmosphere. The bucking stopped, returned, stopped—was repeated many times. The D-ship's cooling system whined. Hull plates creaked. Darkside, lightside, darkside—they repeated themselves in his viewer. The automatic equipment began reeling out atmospheric data: oxygen 23.9, nitrogen 74.8, argon 0.8, carbon dioxide 0.04 … By the time it got into the trace elements, Deirut was gasping with the similarity to the atmosphere of Mother Earth.

The spectrum analyzer produced the datum that the atmosphere was essentially transparent from 3,000 angstroms to 6
×
10
4
angstroms. It was a confirmation and he ignored the instruments when they began producing hydromagnetic data and water vapor impingements. There was only one important factor here: he could breathe the stuff out there.

Instead of filling him with a sense of joyful discovery—as it might have thirty or forty days earlier—this turned on a new spasm of the push. He had to consciously restrain himself from clawing at the instrument panel.

Deirut's teeth began to chatter.

The viewer showed him an island appearing over the horizon. The D-ship swept over it. Deirut gasped at sight of an alabaster ring of tall buildings hugging the curve of a bay. Dots on the water resolved into sailboats as he neared. How oddly familiar it all looked.

Then he was past and headed for a mainland with a low range of hills—more buildings, roads, the patchwork of fenced lands. Then he was over a wide range of prairie with herds of moving animals on it.

Deirut's fingers curled into claws. His skin trembled.

The landing jets cut in and his seat reversed itself. The ship nosed up and the seat adjusted to the new altitude. There came a roaring as the ship lowered itself on its tail jets. The proximity cut-off killed all engines.

The D-ship settled with a slight jolt.

Blue smoke and clouds of whirling ashes lifted past Deirut's scanners from the scorched landing circle. Orange flames swept through dry forage on his right, but the chemical automatics from the ship's nose sent a borate shower onto the fire and extinguished it. Deirut saw the backs of animals fleeing through the smoke haze beyond the fire. Amplification showed them to be four-legged, furred and with tiny flat heads. They ran like bouncing balls.

A tight band of fear cinched on Deirut's chest. This place was too earthlike. His teeth chattered with the unconscious demands of the push.

His instruments informed him they were picking up modulated radio signals—FM and AM. A light showing that the Probe-Test-Watch circuits were activated came alive. Computer response circuit telltales began flickering. Abruptly, the PTW bell rang, telling him: “Something approaches!”

The viewer showed a self-propelled vehicle rolling over a low hill to the north supported by what appeared to be five monstrous penumatic bladders. It headed directly toward the D-ship belching pale white smoke from a rear stack with the rhythm of steam power. External microphones picked up the confirming “chuff-chuff-chuff” and his computer announced that it was a double-action engine with sounds that indicated five opposed pairs of pistons.

A five-sided dun brown cab with dark blue-violet windows overhung the front of the thing.

In his fascination with the machine, Deirut almost forgot the wild urge pushing at him from within. The machine pulled up about fifty meters beyond the charred landing circle, extruded a muzzle that belched a puff of smoke at him. The external microphones picked up a loud explosion and the D-ship rocked on its extended tripods.

Deirut clutched the arms of his chair then sprang to the controls of the ship's automatic defenses, poised a hand over the disconnect switch.

The crawling device outside whirled away, headed east toward a herd of the bouncing animals.

Deirut punched the “Warning Only” button.

A giant gout of earth leaped up ahead of the crawler, brought it to a lurching halt at the brink of a smoking hole. Another gout of earth bounced skyward at the left of the machine; another at the right.

Deirut punched “Standby” on the defense mechanisms, turned to assess the damage. Any new threat from the machine out there and the D-ship's formidable arsenal would blast it out of existence. That was always a step to be avoided, though, and he kept one eye on the screen showing the thing out there. It sat unmoving but still chuffing on the small patch of earth left by the three blast-shots from the ship.

Less than ten seconds later, the computer out-chewed a strip of tape that said the ship's nose section had been blasted open, all proximity detectors destroyed. Deirut was down on this planet until he could make repairs.

Oddly, this eased the pressures of the push within him. It was still there and he could sense it, but the compulsive drive lay temporarily idle as though it, too, had a standby switch.

Deirut returned his attention to the crawler.

The damage had been done, and there was no helping it. A ship could land with its arsenal set on “Destroy,” but deciding what needed destruction was a delicate proposition. Wise counsel said you let the other side get in a first shot if their technology appeared sufficiently primitive. Otherwise, you might make yourself decidedly unwelcome.

Who'd have thought they'd have a cannon and fire the thing without warning?
he asked himself. And the reply stood there accusingly in his mind:
You should've thought of it, stupid. Gunpowder and steampower are almost always concurrent.

Well, I was too upset by the push,
he thought.
Besides, why'd they fire without warning?

Again, the crawler's cab extruded the cannon muzzle and the cab started to turn to bring the weapon to bear on the ship. A warning blast sent earth cascading into the hole at the left of the crawler. The cab stopped turning.

“That's-a-baby,” Deirut said. “Easy does it, fellows. Let's be friends.” He flicked a blue switch at the left side of his board. His external microphones damped out as a klaxon sent its bull roar toward the crawler. It was a special sound capable of intimidating almost any creature that heard it. The sound had an astonishing effect on the crawler. A hatch in the middle of the cab popped open and five creatures boiled out of it to stand on the deck of their machine.

Deirut keyed the microphone beside him into the central computer, raised amplification on his view of the five creatures from the machine. He began reading off his own reactions. The human assessment always helped the computer's sensors.

“Humanoid,” he said. “Upright tubular bodies about a meter and a half tall with two legs encased in some kind of boot. Sack-like garments belted at the waist. Each has five pouches dangling from the belt. Number five is significant here. Flesh color is pale blue-violet. Two arms; articulation—humanoid, but very long forearm. Wide hands with six fingers; looks like two opposable thumbs, one to each side of the hand. Heads—squarish, domed, covered with what appears to be a dark blue-violet beret. Eyes semi-stalked, yellow and just inside the front
corners
of the head. Those heads are very blocky. I suspect the eyes can be twisted to look behind without turning the head.”

The creatures began climbing down off their machine.

Deirut went on with his description: “Large mouth orifice centered beneath the eyes. There appears to be a chin articulation on a short hinge. Orifice lipless, ovoid, no apparent teeth … correction: there's a dark line inside that may be the local equivalent. Separate small orifices below each eye stalk—possibly for breathing. One just turned its head. I see a slight indentation centered on the side of the head—purpose unknown. It doesn't appear to be an ear.”

The five were advancing on the ship now; Deirut backed off the scanner to keep them in view, said: “They carry bows and arrows. That's odd, considering the cannon. Each has a back quiver with … five arrows. That five again. Bows slung on the string over left shoulder. Each has a short lance in a back harness, a blue-violet pennant just below the lance head. Some kind of figure on the pennant—looks like an upside down “U” in orange. Same figures repeated on the front of their tunics which are also blue-violet. Blue violet and five. What's the prognosis?”

Deirut waited for the computers answer to come to him through the speaker grafted into his neck. Relays clicked and the vocoder whispered through the bones of his head: “Probable religious association with color and number five. Extreme caution is indicated on religious matters. Body armor and hand weapon mandatory.”

That's the trouble with computers,
Deirut thought.
Too logical.

The five natives had stopped just, outside the fire-blackened landing circle. They raised their arms to the ship, chanted something that sounded like “Toogayala-toogayala-toogayala.” The sound came from the oval central orifice.

“We'll toogayala in just a minute,” Deirut muttered. He brought out a Borgen machine pistol, donned body armor, aimed two of the ship's bombards directly at the steam wagon and set them on a dead-man switch keyed to a fifteen-second stoppage of his heart. He rigged the stern port to the PTW system, keyed to blow up any unauthorized intruders. Into various pockets he stuffed a lingua pack receptor tuned to his implanted speaker through the computer, a standard contact kit for sampling whatever interested him, a half dozen minigrenades, energy tablets, food analyzer, a throwing knife in a sheath, a miniscanner linked to the ship computer and a slingshot. With a final, grim sensation, he stuffed a medikit under the armor next to his heart.

One more glance around the familiar control center and he slid down the tube to the stern port, opened it and stepped out.

The five natives threw themselves flat on the ground, arms extended toward him.

Deirut took a moment to study them and his surroundings. There was a freshness to the air that even his nose filters could not diminish. It was morning here yet and the sun threw flat light against the low hills and clumps of scrub. They stood out with a clean chiaroscuro dominated by the long blue spear of the ship's shadow wavering across the prairie.

Deirut looked up at his D-ship. She was a red and white striped tower on his side with a gaping hole where the nose should have been. Her number—1107—stenciled in luminous green beneath the nose had just escaped the damage area. He returned his attention to the natives.

They remained stretched out on the grass, their stalked eyes stretched out and peering up at him.

“Let's hope you have a good metal-working industry, friends,” Deirut said. “Otherwise, I'm going to be an extremely unhappy visitor.”

At the sound of his voice, the five grunted in unison: “Toogayala ung-ung.”

“Ung-ung?” Deirut asked. “I thought we were going to toogayala.” He brought out the lingua pack, hung it on his chest with the mike aimed at the natives, moved toward them out of the ship's shadow. As an afterthought, he raised his right hand, palm out and empty in the universal human gesture of peace, but kept his left hand on the Borgen.

“Toogayala!” the five screamed.

His lingua pack remained silent. Toogayala and ung-ung were hardly sufficient for breaking down a language.

Deirut took another step toward them.

The five rocked back to their knees and arose, crouching and apparently poised for flight. Five pairs of stalked eyes pointed toward him. Deirut had the curious feeling then that the five appeared familiar. They looked a little like giant grasshoppers that had been crossed with an ape. They looked like bug-eyed monsters from a work of science fantasy he had read in his youth, which he saw as clear evidence that what the imagination of man could conceive, nature could produce.

Deirut took another step toward the natives, said: “Well, let's talk a little, friends. Say something. Make language, huh?”

The five backed up two steps. Their feet made a dry rustling sound in the grass.

Deirut swallowed. Their silence was a bit unnerving.

Abruptly, something emitted a buzzing sound. It seemed to come from a native on Deirut's right. The creature clutched for its tunic, gabbled: “s'Chareecha! s'Chareecha!” It pulled a small object from a pocket as the others gathered around.