The aircraft snarled into sight, but warily, keeping their distance in swoops and circles that drew fantastic trails of exhaust. For a moment Tom wondered if that didn’t prove the locals were familiar with space-war techniques. Those buzzeroos seemed careful to stay beyond reach of a tractor or pressor beam, that could have seized them… But no. They were exposed to his guns and missiles, which had far greater range, and didn’t know that these were unmanned.
Nevertheless, they were at least shrewd on this planet. From what Tom had let slip, and the battered condition of the vessel, Weyer had clearly guessed that the newcomers were weak. They could doubtless wipe out one or two aircraft before being hit, but could they handle half a dozen? That Weyer had taken the risk and scrambled this much of what must be a very small air fleet suggested implacable enmity. (Why? He couldn’t be so stupid as to assume that everyone from offplanet was a foe. Could he?) What was worse, his assessment of the military situation was quite correct. In her present state, Firedrake could not take on so many opponents and survive.
She entered the clouds.
For a while Tom was blind. Thunder and darkness encompassed him. Metal toned. The instrument dials glowed like goblin eyes. Their needles spun; the ship lurched; Tom stabbed and pulled and twisted controls, sweat drenched his coverall and reeked in his nostrils.
Then he was through, into windy but, uncluttered air. Fifteen kilometers beneath him lay that part of the north temperate zone he had so unfortunately chosen. The view was of a valley, cut into a checkerboard pattern that suggested large agricultural estates. A river wound through, shining silver in what first dawn-light reddened the eastern horizon. A few villages clustered along it, and traffic moved, barge trains and waterships. A swampy delta spread at the eastern end of a great bay.
That bay was as yet in the hour before sunrise, but glimmered with reflections. It had a narrow mouth, opening on a sea to the west. Lights twinkled on either side of the gate, and clustered quite thickly on the southern bayshore. Tom’s glance went to the north. There he saw little trace of habitation. Instead, hills humped steeply toward a mountain which smoked. Forests covered them, but radar showed how rugged they were.
The outercom flashed with the image of the pilot who had first hailed him. Now that conditions were easier, Tom could have swiveled it around himself to let the scanner cover his own features. Yasmin could have done so for him at any time. But he refrained. Anonymity wasn’t an ace in the hole—at most, a deuce or a trey—but he needed every card he had.
“You will bear east-northeast,” the “fish” instructed. “About a hundred kilos upriver lies a cave. Descend there.”
“Kilos?” Tom stalled. He had no intention of leaving the refuges below him for the open flatlands. “Distances. Thousand-meters.”
“But a cave? I mean, look, I want to be a good fellow and so forth, but how’m I goin’ to spot a cave from the air?”
“Spot?” It was the Nikean’s turn to be puzzled. However, he was no fool. “Oh, so, you mean espy. A cave is a stronghouse. You will know it by turrets, projectors, setdown fields.”
“Your Engineer’s castle?”
“Think you we’re so whetless we’d let you near the Great Cave? You might have a tommic boom aboard. No. Karol Weyer dwells by the bay gate. You go to the stronghouse guarding the Nereid River valley. Now change course, I said, or we fire.”
Torn had used the talk-time to shed a good bit of altitude. “We can’t,” he said. “Not that fast. Have to get low first, before we dare shift.”
“You go no lower, friend! Those are our folk down there.”
“Be reasonable,” Torn said. “A spaceship’s worth your havin’, I’m sure, even a damaged one like ours. Why blang us for somethin’ we can’t help?”
“Urn-m-m… hold where you are.”
“I can’t. This is not like an aircraft. I’ve got to either rise or sink. Ask your bosses.”
The pilot’s face disappeared. “But—” Yasmin began. “Shhh!” Tom winked his good eye at her.
He was gambling that they hadn’t had spacecraft on Nike for a long time. Otherwise they wouldn’t have taken such a licking a decade ago; and they’d have sent a ship after, him, rather than those few miserable, probably handmade gravplanes. So if they didn’t have anyone around who was qualified in the practical problems of handling that kind of vessel.
Not but what Firedrake wasn’t giving him practical problems of his own. Wind boomed and shoved.
The pilot returned. “Go lower if you must,” he said. “But follow my word, go above the northshore hills.”
“Surely.” Right what I was hopin’ for! Tom switched to Eylan. “Dagny, get to the forward manlock.”
“What do you say?” rapped the pilot.
“I’m issuin’ orders to my crew,” Tom said. “They don’t speak Anglic.”
“No! You’ll not triple-talk me!”
Tom let out a sigh that was a production. “Unless they know what to do, we’ll crash. Do you want live slaves and a whole spaceship, or no? Make up your mind, son.”
“Urn-m… well. At first ill-doing, we shoot.”
Tom ignored him. “Listen, Dagny. You’re not needed here any more. I can land on my altimeter and stuff. But I’ve got to set us down easy, and not get us hit by some overheated gunner. They must have what we need to make our repairs, but not to build a whole new ship, even s’posin’ we knew how. So we can’t risk defendin’ ourselves, leastwise till we get away from the ship.”
“She will be theirs,” Dagney said, troubled. “And we will be hunted. Shouldn’t we surrender peacefully and bargain with them?”
“What bargainin’ power has a slave got? Whereas free, if nothin’ else, I bet we’re the only two on Nike that can run a spacecraft. Besides, we don’t know what these fellows are like. They could be mighty cruel. No, you go stand by that manlock along, with Yasmin. The minute we touch dirt, you two get out—fast and far.”
“But Tom, you’ll be, on the bridge. What about you?”
“Somebody’s got to make that landin’. I dunno how they’ll react. But you girls won’t have much time to escape yourselves. I’ll come after you. If I haven’t joined you soon, figure I won’t, and do whatever comes natural. And look after Yasmin, huh?”
Silence dwelt for a moment amidst every inanimate noise. Until: “I understand. Tom, if we don’t see each other again, it was good with you.” Dagny uttered a shaken laugh. “Tell her to kiss you for both of us.”
“Aye-ya.” He couldn’t, of course, with that suspicious countenance glowering out of the screen. But in what little Pelevah he had, he gave Yasmin her orders. She didn’t protest, too stunned by events to grasp the implications.
Down and down. The tilted wilderness swooped at him.
“The steerin’s quit on me!” Tom yelled in Anglic. “Yasmin, go fantangle the dreelsprail! Hurry!” She flung off her safety webbing and left the bridge, as fast as possible in her clumsy armor. “I’ve got to make an emergency landin’,” Tom said to the Nikean officer.
Probably that caused them to hold their fire as he had hoped. He didn’t know, nor wonder. He was too busy. The sonoprobe said firm solid below. The altimeter said a hundred meters, fifty, twenty-five, ten—Leaves surged around. Boughs and boles splintered. The farther trees closed in like a cage. Impact shook, drummed, went to silence. Tom cut the engines and gee-field. Native gravity, one-half standard, hit him with giddiness. He unharnessed himself. The deck was canted. He slipped, skidded, got up and pounded down the companionway.
The manlock valves opened at Dagny’s control while Firedrake was still moving. The drop in air pressure hurt her eardrums. She glimpsed foliage against a sky red with dawn, gray with scattering stormclouds. The earthquake landing cast her to hands and knees. She rose, leaning against a bulkhead. Yasmin stumbled into sight. The faceplate stood open before the terrified young visage. “Chaos! Dog that thing!” Dagny cried. “We’ll be at top speed.” She was not understood. She grabbed the girl and snapped the plate shut herself.
“You… know… fly?” she asked in her fragment of Anglic.
“Yes. I think so.” Yasmin wet her lips. Her radio voice was unsteady in the other’s earplugs. “I mean… Lord Tom explained how.”
