coursed from one group of hidden men to the next, until he had made the complete circle concealed from those aboard the Queen. “There are perhaps fifteen out there.”
“To say nothing of reinforcements they may have back in the mountains. But who in the Black Reaches of Outer Space are they?” Rip asked of the air about them.
“Something is about to happen,” Mura stiffened, his attention settling on one spot.
Dane followed the steward’s lead. The other was right. One of the besiegers had walked boldly out of cover and now approached the ship, waving vigorously over his head the age-old sign for parley—a strip of white cloth.
For a moment or two it appeared as if the Queen was not going to answer that. And then the hatch opened far above the surface of the ground. No ramp was lowered. Instead a figure paused in the opening and Dane recognized Captain Jellico.
The bearer of the white flag hesitated some distance away. Though the watchers could not see too clearly in the growing dusk, they could hear, for a voice crackled in their helmet phones, thus proving Rip right—the coms of the raiders were on the same band as their own.
“Thought it over, Captain? Ready to be sensible?”
“Is that all you want to know?” Jellico’s rasp could not be mistaken. “I gave you my decision last night.”
“You can sit here until you starve, Captain. Just try to get off-world—”
“If we can’t get off—neither can you get in!”
“And there he speaks the truth,” Mura observed. “Nothing they have down there is capable of forcing an entrance to the Queen. And if they are able to smash her—she will be of no use to them.”
“You think that that is what they are after—the Queen?” hazarded Dane.
Rip snorted. “That’s obvious. They don’t want her to lift—they have a use for her. I’ll bet that Rich brought us here just to get the Queen.”
“There is the matter of supplies, Captain,” the besieger’s voice purred in their earphones. “We can afford to sit here half a year if it is necessary—you cannot! Come, do not be so childish. We have offered you a fair deal all round. And you have been caught in a pinch, have you not? Your ready funds went at the auction when you bought trading rights here. Well, we are offering you better than trading rights. And we have the patience to sit it out.”
But, if the speaker had the patience he vaunted, one of his fellows did not. Through the air came the crack of a stun rifle. Jellico either ducked or fell back into the ship and the hatch was dapped to. The three Traders on the cliff sat very still. It appeared that the man with the flag had not expected that move on the part of his own side. He stayed where he was for a moment before he dropped the treacherous strip of white and dived for the cover of an outcrop, from which point he squirmed back to his original post.
“That was not planned,” remarked Mura. “Someone was a fraction impatient. He will suffer for his zeal—since he has just put an end to the chance of future negotiation.”
“Do you think the Captain was hurt?” Dane asked.
“The old man knows all the tricks,” Rip did not seem worried. “I’d say he got out in a hurry. But now they’ll have to starve him into surrender. That shot is not going to get our men to come out with their hands up—”
“Meanwhile,” Mura dropped his glasses to his knee, “there is the little matter of our own action. We might be able to slip through those lines in the dark, but with the ship sealed, how can we get in? They are not going to lower a line at the first hail out of the night. Not now.”
Dane gazed across the rough ground which lay between the heights on which he perched and the distant ship. Yes, it might be simple to avoid the sentry post of the besiegers, they would be more intent on the ship than on the territory behind their own lines. Maybe they did not even know that some of the Queen’s crew had escaped their trap. But, having reached the ship, how could one get on board?
“A problem, a problem,” Mura murmured.
“Aren’t we on a level with the control section here?” Rip asked suddenly. “Maybe we could rig up some kind of a signal to let them know we were sending someone in—”
Dane was willing to try. He squinted along the line from where he sat to the nose of the ship.
“It will have to be done very soon,” Mura warned. “Night is coming fast.”
Rip looked up at the sky. The sun of the morning had long since vanished. Leaden clouds hung over them. And it was clearly twilight.
“Suppose we made a shelter—maybe out of our tunics—and lit a torch in it. The range of the light would be limited at the sides—it could not be seen from below. But those on the Queen might catch it—”
The steward’s answer was to unbuckle his equipment belt and pull at the seal latch of his tunic. Dane hurriedly followed his example. Then they crouched shivering in the cold, holding their tunics as side screens, while Rip squatted between, flashing his torch on and off in the distress signal of the Trading code. It was such a slim chance, someone would have to be in the control cabin watching at just the right angle to catch that click, click, click of light—a mere pinprick of radiance.
Then the night beacon of the Queen flashed on, striking up into the grey sky as it had fought the fog a day earlier. Only now it lit the surrounding clouds. And as the three on the cliff watched, hoping to read in this some reply to their improvised com, the yellowish beam took on a ruddier tinge.
Mura sighed with relief. “They have read us—”
“How do you know?” Dane could see nothing to lead the steward to believe that.
“They had switched on the storm ray. See, now it fades once more. But they read us!” He was smiling as he donned his tunic. “I would suggest that we compose a proper message among us and also inform Wilcox of this development. If we can communicate with the Queen, even if she cannot with us, something may be done to our advantage after all.”
So they went down to the crawler. It did not take long to relay the news.
“But they cannot answer us,” Wilcox put his finger on the weakness of the whole set up. “They wouldn’t have used the storm ray if they had had any other means of letting us know they read you—”
“We’ll have to send someone in. Now we can signal that he is coming and they will be waiting to take him aboard,” Rip said eagerly.
Wilcox’s manner suggested that he did not wholly agree with that plan. But though they discussed it point by point, there did not seem to be any other solution.
Mura got to his feet, “The dark is coming fast. We must decide upon a plan at once, for the climb to our signal post is not one to be taken when it cannot be seen. Who is to go and when? That much we can send in code—”
“Shannon,” Wilcox singled out the astrogator-apprentice, “this is the time those cat’s eyes of yours will come in handy. You can see as much in the dark as Sinbad—or you seemed to that time on Baldur. Want to try to make it at, say,” he consulted his watch, “twenty-one hours? That will give our playmates on the sentry posts time to settle down.”
Rip’s beaming face was answer enough. And he was humming as the three once more ascended the rock and took over the task of sending the message.
“You will add,” Mura remarked, “that your safe arrival is to be signalled back to us with the storm ray. We would like to rejoice in your success.”
“Sure, man. But I’m not worrying,” Rip’s natural buoyancy was returning for the first time since he had made that horrible discovery in the wrecked Rimbold. “This is a stroll compared to that job we had on Baldur.”
Mura looked grave. “Never underestimate what may stand against you. You are experienced enough in Trade to remember that, Rip. This is no time to take unnecessary chances—”
“Not me, man! I’ll be as silent and slippery as a snake out there. They will never know I passed by.”
Once again the steward and Dane shed their tunics and shivered in the damp cold as Rip flashed the news of his mission across to the silent, sealed ship. There was no answer but they were certain that after their first essay at communication there had been a watcher stationed to wait for a second message.
It was arranged that Mura and Dane were to bed down on the heights while Rip went back to the crawler and waited to set out from there. When the astrogator-apprentice disappeared below, Dane moved rocks to provide them with a windbreak.
They had no source of warmth but their nearness to each other, so they crouched together in the pocket Dane had devised with nothing to do but wait out the hours until the signal came that Rip had reached his
