Part 58 (1/2)

Every mining plane, whatever else it was used for, followed a mining tradition. Every employee was basically a miner. Mining techniques, procedures, and equipment were into the mining company like kerbango was into the bloodstream and far more permanently. Hoists, lifts, cable ladders, safety lines, hooks, nets...they even shoveled paper around with scoops that looked like mine shovels. It was totally inconceivable that that plane out there didn't have a cable ladder and safety wires.

So why didn't it just lower a cable ladder and safety wire to him and let him time those door swings and dart up the ladder to the plane? They could lower him a jet backpack and even pick him out of the air.

All this was so routine to Zzt that the idea of anybody having to remove a door to make it wide open was a strange precaution.

Was somebody trying to steal a canister? That was impossible. They were all locked in. Everything in this d.a.m.ned derelict was armored, inside and out. Such s.h.i.+ps were h.e.l.l to repair, and he had resented the time Terl had taken. You couldn't get at anything in it. It was just a one-time-use rig, built to be expended. So n.o.body could steal anything here.

Were they trying to send it elsewhere? Well, you couldn't do that without keys, and he had no keys.

So what was going on?

The battering barrage that got the door all the way open and warped it in that position made it easier to lower a cable ladder. All right! Where was the ladder and safety wire? Nothing came dangling down into the huge open maw.

Zzt had just moved forward to peek when blinding lights flashed on, throwing the interior into a blaze of dirt motes and floating rust dust shaken loose in the firing.

He heard a plane's motor suddenly race.

He didn't even have time to get behind the protective frame.

Before his half-blinded eyes a plane shot in the door!

The floor plates shook! Metal shrieked.

The plane had crashed on the loading stage platform directly inside the door.

Zzt stumbled backward, expecting it to blow up. But its motor suddenly died and the peculiar fang-setting-on-edge sound of molecular cohesion pierced the dying whine of components. The thing had set its skid grips with a timing and precision Zzt had never seen before.

Staggered by the concussion and already sick with the rolling, Zzt lurched to his feet. It still had its lights on. He peered through this glare to see the pilot. He couldn't make it out. He staggered forward, hand on his belt gun. He still couldn't see the pilot. The armored gla.s.s door...the pilot was sitting up slowly.

A small being! A mask! A strange fur coat collar!

Zzt let out a near hysterical shriek. ”A Tolnep!”

In blind confusion, Zzt drew and fired his belt gun. He fired again and again and again.

His shots were hitting an armored window. He was trying to shoot an armored window! He was also trying to back up and get away.

The drone rolled; Zzt collided with a gas canister, tripped on its cable, started to fall, and threw out his paws to save himself. His gun went flying, hit the floor plates, slithered, and dropped out the open door into the waiting void below.

Skidding and catching his breath in sobs, Zzt got behind a distant frame to protect himself. He believed he was one dead Psychlo!

Chapter 8.

Jonnie came out of it. The shock of the crash had knocked him out for a moment. He guessed he was getting tired with the strain and the cold. A jolt like that shouldn't have knocked him out.

Then he found his left knee was bruised from hitting the console, the fingernails of his left hand were bleeding from stubbing on keys, and his forehead ached. He decided it must have been a harder crash than he thought.

The magnetic grip brake was on, but peering, he was having a hard time seeing it. He took off his air mask and found that his forehead had been cut on the mask faceplate rim and the blood was getting in his eyes. He reached back and got the tail end of a mining tarpaulin and staunched the blood and wiped out the faceplate.

Now he could see.

The landing had been successful. An ancient gag he had found on a cartoon card over at their base occurred to him: ”A successful landing is one you can walk away from.” Well, he could walk, he hoped.

The s.h.i.+p was slewed. The wind pressure had come off the nose as it went in, but it was still on the tail. The tail was sticking way out of the door but was pushed over against the side of the doorframe. Was the s.h.i.+p hurt?

He looked around inside. The main motor housing and the two right and left balance housings seemed all right. He reached for the door latch to get out and then something tugged at his memory. Something about the crash. What was it? Ah, something must have exploded in the drone. He dimly recalled hearing a series of explosions. He reached over to the pilot window and touched it, intending to wipe some steam from it. It was hot! Yes, something had exploded in this drone.

Well, that was a good sign, maybe. It meant something could break in this place.

He looked at the gas canisters vivid in the plane lights. They looked sound. He saw that they were also armored and that all the cables to them were as well. He looked around through the s.h.i.+p's windows in dismay.

This place was as armored inside as outside!

What an unpleasant view. Structural rib frames, very deep. Floor plates for loading only, having gaps on both sides of the walkway. Cross-braces. Toward the tail there were a series of holes like a beehive- ah, additional gas canister s.p.a.ces; the thing was only about a third full. But enough, enough to wipe out any place it was going.

How much time did he have? He looked at his watch and it was shattered. There were no clocks in these battle planes; the clocks were all down in the console cabinets and had no faces anyway. Only lapsed time dials on the dash. He realized he wouldn't know when radio silence ended. He tried to compute by sunrise but he didn't know where he was beyond a few hours short of Scotland. Abruptly he realized he was maundering. Still a bit dazed?

He put the air mask on and made sure it was snug in case a gas canister had cracked in the crash, which he doubted. He checked to see whether Terl's blast gun was still there. Yes, fallen on the floor. He might need it to try to cut cables. He put it in his belt and got out of the plane.

The thunder of these motors was deafening. Arctic wind curled in at the door. The night lay like a black pit below them.

He examined the gas canisters. No, the plane hadn't even touched them. Nothing could touch them, from the looks of it. They were covered with the crud of extreme age. He found a half-obliterated date, a Psychlo date. These things dated from the original attack! Spares? Not used in that attack? No, another date. They had been refilled about twenty-five years later. The hope that they were expended died. They were live, all right.

Where were the controls of this thing? Ah, way up forward. Best look at those. There just might be a chance that he could change setting and, in extremis, simply pull the wires loose.

He walked up along the plates. His plane's lights were bright even up front.

There was the setting box. A ”preset,” and there was the console one set the preset plates in. Fat lot of good the console was. Like a stamping machine. He looked at the preset box. One usually fed preset plates into the side and latched the box. Here, too. But this one?

It was armored.

It had a keyhole. He looked around but there was no key left behind.

Cables? All armored. And they even went into the preset box with an armored connection.

Crud was all around. Lord, this thing was old! It was only clean around the preset box. He supposed they had cleaned it up to set it.

A vague feeling of unease troubled him. Completely aside from his intentness on stopping this drone, there was something odd in this place. He looked down toward the plane. The deep recesses between the frames were in complete darkness.

Zzt, unseen in a recess not six feet away, crouched back in desperation. His wits were racing. What did he know about Tolneps? Shortly after he had graduated from Mechanics College on Psychlo he had done a duty tour on Archiniabes where the company had mines. It was in this universe. The system star was the double star he sometimes saw in winter on this planet; the smaller star of the ”dumbbell” had a weight so dense that a half cubic inch of it here would weigh one ton. A minesite had been wiped out utterly by a Tolnep raid. They came from somewhere near the star cl.u.s.ter he often saw here. They had mastered time control and could hold it frozen and their s.h.i.+ps made long piratical voyages. The company had a.n.a.lyzed several of their dead bodies. What did he remember about them? What weakness? He could think only of strengths. Their bite was deadly poison. They had a body density comparable to iron. They were immune to Psychlo gas. They couldn't be killed with an ordinary blast gun. Weaknesses, weaknesses, weaknesses? If he didn't recall them he would never get out of this alive. Never.

This one was walking back down past him now. He shrank against the s.h.i.+p skin. It didn't see him here in the darkness.