Plague Ship Part 21

"He's given us our proof. Tell him to report off--"

But the disembodied voice which answered that was Weeks'.

"I haven't got it as bad as the others. I'll ride this out."

Rip shook his head. But short-handed as they were he could not argue Weeks away from his post if the man insisted upon staying. He had other, and for the time being, more important matters before him.

How long they sweated out that descent upon their native world Dane could never afterwards have testified. He only knew that hours must have pa.s.sed, until he thought groggily that he could not remember a time he was not glued in the seat which had been Tang's, the earphones pressing against his sweating skull, his fatigue-drugged mind being held with difficulty to the duty at hand.

Sometime during that haze they made their landing. He had a dim memory of Rip sprawled across the pilot's control board and then utter exhaustion claimed him also and the darkness closed in. When he roused it was to look about a cabin tilted to one side. Rip was still slumped in a muscle cramping posture, breathing heavily. Dane bit out a forceful word born of twinges of his own, and then snapped on the visa-plate.

For a long moment he was sure that he was not yet awake. And then, as his dazed mind supplied names for what he saw, he knew that Rip had failed.

Far from being in the center--or at least well within the perimeter of the dread Big Burn--they must have landed in some civic park or national forest. For the ma.s.sed green outside, the bright flowers, the bird he sighted as a brilliant flash of wind coasting color--those were not to be found in the twisted horror left by man's last attempt to impress his will upon his resisting kind.

Well, it had been a good try, but there was no use expecting luck to ride their fins all the way, and they had had more than their share in the E-Stat affair. How long would it be before the Law arrived to collect them? Would they have time to state their case?

The faint hope that they might aroused him. He reached for the com key and a second later tore the headphones from his appalled ears. The crackle of static he knew--and the numerous strange noises which broke in upon the lanes of communication in s.p.a.ce--but this solid, paralyzing roar was something totally new--new, and frightening.

And because it was new and he could not account for it, he turned back to regard the scene on the viewer with a more critical eye. The foliage which grew in riotous profusion was green right enough, and Terra green into the bargain--there was no mistaking that. But--Dane caught at the edge of Com-unit for support. But--What was that liver-red blossom which had just reached out to engulf a small flying thing?

Feverishly he tried to remember the little natural history he knew. Sure that what he had just witnessed was unnatural--un-Terran--and to be suspect!

He started the spy lens on its slow revolution in the Queen's nose, to get a full picture of their immediate surroundings. It was tilted at an angle--apparently they had not made a fin-point landing this time--and sometimes it merely reflected slices of sky. But when it swept earthward he saw enough to make him believe that wherever the s.p.a.cer had set down it was not on the Terra he knew.

Subconsciously he had expected the Big Burn to be barren land--curdled rock with rivers of frozen quartz, substances boiled up through the crust of the planet by the action of the atomic explosives. That was the way it had been on Limbo--on the other "burned-off" worlds they had discovered where those who had preceded mankind into the Galaxy--the mysterious, long vanished "Forerunners"--had fought their grim and totally annihilating wars.

But it would seem that the Big Burn was altogether different--at least here it was. There was no rock sterile of life outside--in fact there would appear to be too much life. What Dane could sight on his limited field of vision was a teeming jungle. And the thrill of that discovery almost made him forget their present circ.u.mstances. He was still staring bemused at the screen when Rip muttered, turned his head on his folded arms and opened his sunken eyes:

"Did we make it?" he asked dully.

Dane, not taking his eyes from that fascinating scene without, answered: "You brought us down. But I don't know where--"

"Unless our instruments were 'way off, we're near to the heart of the Burn."

"Some heart!"

"What does it look like?" Rip sounded too tired to cross the cabin and see for himself. "Barren as Limbo?"

"Hardly! Rip, did you ever see a tomato as big as a melon--At least it looks like a tomato," Dane halted the spy lens as it focused upon this new phenomena.

"A what?" There was a note of concern in Shannon's voice. "What's the matter with you, Dane?"

"Come and see," Dane willingly yielded his place to Rip but he did not step out of range of the screen. Surely that did have the likeness to a good, old fas.h.i.+oned earth-side tomato--but it was melon size and it hung from a bush which was close to a ten foot tree!

Rip stumbled across to drop into the Com-tech's place. But his expression of worry changed to one of simple astonishment as he saw that picture.

"Where are we?"

"You name it," Dane had had longer to adjust, the excitement of an explorer sighting virgin territory worked in his veins, banis.h.i.+ng fatigue. "It must be the Big Burn!"

"But," Rip shook his head slowly as if with that gesture to deny the evidence before his eyes, "that country's all bare rock. I've seen pictures--"

"Of the outer rim," Dane corrected, having already solved that problem for himself. "This must be farther in than any survey s.h.i.+p ever came.

Great Spirit of Outer s.p.a.ce, what has happened here?"

Rip had enough technical training to know how to get part of the answer.

He leaned halfway across the com, and was able to flick down a lever with the very tip of his longest finger. Instantly the cabin was filled with a clicking so loud as to make an almost continuous drone of sound.

Dane knew that danger signal, he didn't need Rip's words to underline it for him.

"That's what's happened. This country is pile 'hot' out there!"

Chapter XIV

SPECIAL MISSION

That click, the dial beneath the counter, warned them that they were as cut off from the luxuriance outside as if they were viewing a scene on Mars or Sargol from their present position. To go beyond the s.h.i.+elding walls of the s.p.a.cer into that riotous green world would sentence them to death as surely as if the Patrol was without, with a flamer trained on their hatch. There was no escape from that radiation--it would be in the air one breathed, strike though one's skin. And yet the wilderness flourished and beckoned.

"Mutations--" Rip mused. "s.p.a.ce, Tau'd go wild if he could see it!"

And that mention of the Medic brought them back to the problem which had earthed them. Dane leaned back against the slanting wall of the cabin.

"We have to have a Medic--"

Rip nodded without looking away from the screen.

"Can one of the flitters be s.h.i.+elded?" The Cargo-apprentice persisted.

"That's a thought! Ali should know--" Rip reached for the inter-com mike.

"Engines!"

"So you _are alive_?" Ali's voice had a bite in it. "About time you're contacting. Where are we? Besides being lopsided from a recruit's scrambled set-down, I mean."

"In the Big Burn. Come top-side. Wait--how's Weeks?"

"He has a devil's own headache, but he hasn't blacked out yet. Looks like his immunity holds in part. I've sent him bunkside for a while with a couple of pain pills. So we've made it--"

He must have left to join them for when Rip answered: "After a fas.h.i.+on,"

into the mike there was no reply.

And the clang of his boot plates on the ladder heralded his arrival at their post. There was an interval for him to view the outer world and accept the verdict of the counter and then Rip voiced Dane's question:

"Can we s.h.i.+eld one of the flitters well enough to cross that? I can't take the Queen up and earth her again--"