A Gift For Terra Part 2

_Andruul cursed. "Allowed it! Those nomadic sc.u.m are like flies! No matter how many you exterminate, they never fail to come back in double their number. And they strike at the precise moment you are certain the bones of the last one are sinking beneath the sand. Somehow Central Patrol has got to get that unit back._"

"_You're certain it was a theft, then?_"

"_Don't be an idiot. Since when can those gypsies build anything more complex than a crude electrical generator? Let alone a psibeam unit?

They've forgotten what little their civilization ever knew._"

"_They are clever enough at evading directed over-surface missiles._"

_Andruul muttered something, and lapsed into silence._

"_Well there is one thing for certain at any rate.... A psibeam unit is unaccounted for, and despite our protective screening, the Earthman was visibly disturbed in his sleep. His encephalotapes show that clearly.

They know about him, Andruul, and they're making their bid. Central Patrol had better be quick and certain this time._"

_Andruul kept his silence. But he thought. He thought Central Patrol was getting less efficient and more stupid every day._

It was a strange feeling; a feeling with which no human was emotionally equipped to deal.

Johnny looked at his flawlessly renovated s.h.i.+p, poised like a snub-nosed bullet against the blue-black brittleness of the Martian sky, and then looked behind him at the crescent-shaped formation of tracked vehicles that had escorted him back across the sucking red sand to this place.

With each heavy-booted step away from them he closed the short distance between them and his s.h.i.+p, and there was not enough time to think about the feeling. Or about the heavy sealed tube they had given him to take back to his people.

Usually, when a man ventured beyond the bounds of familiar existence, there was conflict. Either a struggle to win, or, immediately recognizable success, with no struggle or hint of conflict at all.

But not this. Not this success that seemed--what was the _word_?

Hostile? That was ridiculous. These people were friendly. _But somehow--there was an empty ring--_

h.e.l.l! They had saved his life. Rebuilt his s.h.i.+p. Given him the tube that contained transcriptions, in his own language, of every scientific secret his people could ever hope to learn for themselves in the next thousand years! And, they had even buried Ferris....

Use the brains of a mature man, Johnny Love! You've pulled it off without even trying! The most stupendous thing any man in any age has ever pulled off ... without even trying! For G.o.d's sake don't question--don't question things you don't understand! Take the credit and let the soul-searching go!

He looked behind him again. They were still there. A special, smiling farewell escort, watching a single, solitary figure cross a short expanse of sand to a towering, glistening thing of power.

He raised a booted foot to the bottom fin-step, hauled himself up by the stern mounting rungs, hammered the outer lock stud with his gloved fist and the hatch swung open. Like a trap.

He could feel the skin at the back of his neck tighten but he forced himself to ignore it. The lock cycled up to thirteen psi and the inner port swung automatically inward, and then he was inside, clambering up the narrow ladder past the t.i.tanium alloy fuel tanks and the spidery catwalks between them to the tiny control room in the forehull.

He would not be waiting for Harrison and Janes. He would get the h.e.l.l out of here and then radio them and let them make all the decisions from there. Earth for him. Home. He ached for it.

He strapped himself in the hammock, punched the warming studs for each engine, and there was a dull, m.u.f.fled throb below him as each jumped into subdued life. The banks of dials that curved in front of him glowed softly, and he started an almost automatic blast-off check. It took twelve precious minutes.

Then he was ready. Scanners on, heat up ... ready.

The Martian sky was like frozen ink above him and his hands were wet inside his gloves and there was a choking dryness in his throat.

_Now...._

And he could not move. There was a sudden, awful nausea and his head spun, and before his eyes there spread a bleeding Earth; the sun dimmed, and fertile plains were cast in sudden shadow.... The air chilled, the shadow spread, and there were skeletons reaching upward to a puffy, leaden sky!

_And Earth was no longer what Men had built!_

Then the horror in his head was gone, and he felt an awful pressure on each side of it. His hands ... he had been pressing with insane strength at both sides of his skull as if to crush it with his bare hands.... His face was wet, and he was breathing, choking, in strangling gulps.

A scanner alarm clanged.

He forced his eyes to focus on the center screen.

"Earthman! Emergency! There has been a flaw discovered in the repair of your s.h.i.+p! Do not blast off! Do not...."

The other image caught him as his arm was in mid-flight toward the control bank. Sweet and warm ... the fertile plains mounting their golden fruits to a mellowed sun, and beyond the distant gently-rolling hills spread the resplendent city, and there were other cities....

But his arm kept going, its muscles loose, and it fell. Heavily.

Squarely on the stud-complex toward which its fist had been aimed a split-second before.

The engines roared, and the s.h.i.+p lurched upward from the red sand.

_The command flicked into the Captain's brain like a lash of ice._

"_Slaazar! Converge, sheaf!_"

"_Converging, sir...." It would be no use, of course. If the high bra.s.s had been content to rely on the beams rather than on their own subtlety in the first place, the Earthman would never have fallen prey to the Nomads, even for a second. But they had wanted to be as forthright as possible--force, they said, would only arouse suspicion. Psibeam units only as a last resort.... The lowliest Patrol Lancer could have told them the folly of that!_

_Hastily, Slaazar issued orders to his battery crews tracking the ascending s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, their units already nearing overload potential. But the desert-sc.u.m would see some real psi-power now! They'd see it wasted completely if they saw it at all.... Because they'd outmaneuvered the bra.s.s again!_

"_Convergence impossible, sir._"

_As he had expected._

"_Colonel Truul, this is Captain Slaazar. Target has pa.s.sed critical planetary curvature. Convergence impossible. Standing by, sir._"

_For several moments after that, the thin atmosphere of Mars was warmed a little...._

Acceleration blackout had not been total; leaving Mars was even easier than leaving the surface of Earth for the orbits of the Stations. But there was a period of no-thought, no-time, no-being. And then full consciousness seeped back slowly. But not as it was supposed to.

Johnny Love knew he had come to because he could see the banked instruments glowing palely before him; because he could realize from reading them that his s.h.i.+p was doing its job to perfection. Almost ready to complete the blast-off ogee, and--

Angrily he belted the scanner switches off and the dull red sphere faded from the viewplates.

And he could feel the sweat start again all over his body. No, the returning consciousness was all wrong.... All wrong, and the image wouldn't go away....

Red desert he had seen before, yet had not seen. There were dark ridges of brown-green at its horizon; oddly-formed crater-places that might once have held placid lakes. And on all the vast surface there was no hint of the Patrol tracks, no sign of--anything.

But he had to descend to the place.

He did not know how to locate it, but the image told him that it did not matter. The image said merely that he must begin cutting his power.