seized the handle of a hatch, and pulled. He held his breath as he looked inside. There were two seats, fabric partly rotted, and a control panel which didn't look too complicated. «It's all right, Jan,» he yelled. «I'm going inside to take a look.» Jan stood up, her mouth open as if to yell. He lowered himself into the vehicle. The instruments were labeled in English. There was a tab which read: autocontrol—manual. He flipped the switch. Nothing happened. He heard a sound, and then Jan's head was peering over the edge of the hatch. «Come on in,» he said. He helped her down. She tried to dust off the seat, and the fabric came apart under her hand. She made a face and sat down. «How'd you like to fight a war on one of these things?» he asked. She shook her head violently, no. «Funny things, the old combustion engines,» he said. «Used fossil fuel, refined from petroleum oil.» The controls of the armored thing were basic, simple. He toyed with switches. One switch was stuck. He forced it and it went into place with a click. A needle moved on a gauge which said, auxiliary two. «I think it just ran out of fuel,» he said. He pressed the starter button. The old engine coughed into life. «I'll be damned,» he said. «Let's get back to the ship,» Jan said. «Just a minute.» He worked the foot pedals and the mechanical shift. The machine growled into motion, going straight for the 47, and he turned the steering wheel wildly until it straightened out. «Hey, this might be sort of fun,» he said. He wheeled the machine to face the rock outcrop. There was a red light over a button which he suspected might be the firing button for the weapons. He found a little set of controls which made the muzzles of the weapons move, trained them on a rock, and pushed the button. Twin beams streaked out. The rock disintegrated and melted in the blaze of the laser cannon. Okay. So it was fun to play with an old machine of war. There might be others on the way, and they might be better-directed. He left the thing pointed away from the 47, killed the engine, and turned off the ignition switches. Back on the 47 they still could not raise the Lady Sandy. Pete went back to work. He worked through without sleep. It seemed that in the past few days he'd learned how to live without sleep. When the hull was patched, and held, he repressurized the ship and went to work on the control cable. It was a simple job. He had that part of it done in a few hours, and then he was in control to activate and test all systems one by one. Jan was on watch. One by one the systems were back on line. The generator's field was fine. It was just a matter of time waiting for a charge, and it would be a longer wait than usual because in order to repair the cable Pete had had to drain all charge. It would be three full hours before he had enough juice to blink her up. He didn't want to trust the ailing flux drive. There was nothing to do but wait, and watch. There were still two hours to go when a new dust cloud appeared off in the direction of the fortification. This time there were two of the armored vehicles, traveling side by side. They were coming at fifty miles an hour, and there was not enough charge in the generator to activate it. Pete turned on the flux. The 47 rose a couple of feet and dropped like a stone, jarring his teeth. The flux drive was completely out. The two oncoming armored vehicles were about half a mile away and coming fast. He didn't even have time to finger his skull. Wherever they went, they'd go together. It was as simple as that. He was more sure than ever that the planet was unpeopled now, and he wasn't content to let a bunch of computer-directed machines do him out of being rich. «Come on,» he said, grabbing Jan by the hand. They were in the old war tank when the oncoming vehicles began to circle the 47. They came at the stern side by side. Pete had been experimenting with laser controls, and he had it down pat. Each of the oncoming vehicles had a laser muzzle aimed at it head-on when Pete pushed the fire button. A wild burst of laser fire came from one tank as it began to melt. A searing blast of heat washed over Pete's vehicle as the 47 blazed and crumpled, and then there was only the sizzle of Pete's weapons as the two armored vehicles puddled into a mass of useless, steaming metal. Poor old girl. She was a sad sight. Her entire side had been burned, melted. The housing of the blink drive was exposed. She'd never fly again. Jan was weeping silently. They stood on the hot sand and looked at her, and Pete felt like weeping, too. His hands were at his side as he thought. He didn't even think about rubbing his head. They plundered her. They put as much food and liquids into the old armored vehicle as there was room. Pete drove away from the poor old 47 without looking back. She was useless, flux drive gone, blink drive disabled, all communications melted away in the blast of laser cannon. He followed the tracks which led back toward the fortified emplacement. He'd seen the extent of that red, sandy desert from the air. He knew that they'd never make it to the more moderate zones south and north of the desert. There was only one place to go. The treads of the vehicle whined and screeched for oil. The old internal-combustion engine coughed and jerked and snorted. The air conditioner worked sporadically, sending a blast of hot air one minute and a chill breeze the next. Pete held the speed to twenty-five until he had the feel of the thing, then accelerated to fifty. The vehicle burst up over a sandy dune and Jan let out a yelp. They were less than two hundred yards from the concrete-and-metal face of the fortification. Chapter Nine Aboard the Lady Sandy, Buck King and Tom Asher were on watch when the Stranden 47 began to send out her Maydays. At the first voice transmission King looked at Asher and grinned. «Got himself into trouble.» «Too bad,» Asher said. «Guess we'd better call Fuller.» «Why?» King asked. «Because that Mayday is recorded on the ship's tapes, that's why. Because it's the mines for ignoring a Mayday.» King sulked until all four of the crew were in control. The Mayday signals had switched to stat. The Lady received two of them. «Okay,» Fuller said. «Let's go.» The Lady went into the planet's atmosphere carefully. Nothing happened. Detection had the 47 located in the middle of a desert, a good distance from the nearest fortification. Fuller turned on the visuals at ninety thousand feet and the Lady lowered to see the laser-gun battle, to see one armored vehicle creak off toward the fortification. To see the 47 in ruins. «They've had it,» Buck King said. «Just hold on,» Fuller told him. He was thinking hard. If the crew of the 47 were dead he could complete the job on the ship's tapes, destroy them. Then they'd have a planet. He had come to the same conclusion that Pete had reached, that there was nothing but a bunch of computer-directed machines running around down there. First, however, he had to be sure the Jaynes couple were dead. He waited until the vehicle had disappeared and lowered the Lady carefully, left her, himself, in a suit. He didn't trust the ship's instruments, which said the air was okay. He found the 47 empty. The laser cannon had done a beautiful job on the communications bank. The area where the permanent tapes had been stored was a congealing puddle of cooling metal. There'd be no way anyone would salvage any information out of that. He took the good news back to the men aboard the Lady Sandy. There was just one thing that bothered him. There were no bodies on or around the Stranden 47. «Maybe that thing got them,» Jarvis said. «We have to be sure,» Fuller said. He dictated a report into the permanent tapes, all about how the Lady had arrived too late. He filed a claim to the planet in the name of all four crew members. To hell with the Rimfire. She was small stuff compared to a life-zone planet. And this one was a beauty. She was all virgin, virgin forests and plains and beautiful, clear lakes and oceans. She was the finest, a real priority planet. Hell, the settlers would fall all over themselves getting out to her. And all that stood between him and being a very, very wealthy man were a few old machines. Brad Fuller wished for just one ship-to-ship weapon, just one blaster, even an old laser cannon. But all he had was the saffer. «You guys know the stakes,» he said. His three companions nodded grimly. «You willing to take a few risks?» «Why not?» King asked. The other two nodded. «All right,» Fuller said. «We know that the fortified emplacements have laser cannon. Apparently Jaynes lured off all their missiles. We got nothing but a tug.» «We can throw rocks at them,» King said sarcastically. Fuller scowled, started to speak, then broke out in a grin. «You know, Buck, if you weren't so stupid, you'd be smart.» He went out over the desert, holding the Lady Sandy at a couple of hundred feet until he found what he wanted, a freestanding boulder some thirty feet in diameter. He touched the belly of the Lady down onto the
rock, adjusted the field, and lifted tons of rock as if it were an integral part of the ship. «That's just what we're gonna do,» he chuckled, as he lifted the Lady Sandy for altitude. «We're gonna throw rocks at 'em.» Chapter Ten When the armored vehicle burst up over a sand dune and the fortified position, with all of the dark, threatening laser cannon ports near the top, was just below on a flatness, Pete cut speed and swiveled the vehicle to turn quickly back behind the dune. Each second he expected to feel the first heat of the blasting, melting power of a laser. When they were safely behind the dune he stopped the vehicle. He walked on the sun-heated sand and rock to peek over the top of the rise. The concrete-and-metal vastness was silent. Heat waves shimmered from its domed top. Jan crept up to lie on the hot sand beside him. «Are you thinking about going in?» she asked. «I don't know anything else to do.» It was a large continent, and a large desert. Hundreds of miles separated them from the nearest green zone. He had no idea how to find water in the desert. He used hand-held binoculars to examine the fort. He was intrigued by what seemed to be unfinished construction, partially covered by drifted sand. «Jan, I think that either they didn't have time to finish the defenses against land assault or they're covered by sand,» he said. He led Jan back to the rusting old armored vehicle and circled the fort, pausing now and then to study the structure. On what had to be the leeward side of the prevailing winds he could clearly see the strong metal framework of unfinished construction. It was getting hot. It was midday, and the sun blazed down with an intensity which completely overwhelmed the sporadic air conditioning of the inside of the tank. It didn't take deductive reasoning to understand that their only chance was somehow to get inside the fort. He had to hope that once there they'd find a way of communicating with the Lady Sandy, or that he could close down the laser cannon so that the Lady could
