All this was tedious. Sergeant Madden grunted:
"That'll be it," he said, and pointed. "Water world. It's the color ofocean. Try it."
Patrolman Willis threw on the telescope screen. The image of the distantplanet leaped into view. It was Procyron III. The spiral cloud-arms of aconsiderable storm showed in the southern hemisphere, but in the norththere was a group or specks which would be the planet's only solidground--the archipelago reported by the century-old survey. The_Cerberus_ should have been the first ship to land there in a hundredyears, and the squad ship should be the second.
Patrolman Willis got the squad ship competently over to the planet, adiameter out. He juggled to position over the archipelago. SergeantMadden turned on the space phone. Nothing. He frowned. A grounded shipawaiting help should transmit a beam signal to guide its rescuer. Butnothing came up from the ground.
Patrolman Willis looked at him uncertainly. Sergeant Madden rumbled andswung the telescope below. The surface of the planet appeared--deepwater, practically black beneath a surface reflection of daytime sky.The image shifted--a patch of barren rocks. The sergeant glanced at thesurvey picture, shifted the telescope, and found the northern-mostisland. He swelled the picture. He could see the white of monstrous surfbreaking on the windward shore--waves that had gathered height going allaround the planet. He traced the shoreline. There was a bay up at thetop.
He centered the shoreline of the bay and put on maximum magnification.Then he pointed a stubby forefinger. A singular, perfectly straightstreak of black appeared, beginning a little distance inland from thebay and running up into what appeared to be higher ground. The streakended not far from a serpentine arm of the sea which almost cut theisland in half.
"That'll be it," said Sergeant Madden, rumbling. "The _Cerberus_ had toland on her rockets. She had some ground speed. She burned a ten-milestreak on the ground, coming down." He growled. "Commercial skippers!Should've matched velocity aloft! Take her down."
The squad ship drove for ground.
Patrolman Willis steadied the ship no more than a few thousand feethigh, above the streak of scorched ground and ashes.
"It was heading inland, all right," rumbled Sergeant Madden. "Lucky! Ifit'd been heading the other way, it could've gone out and landed in thesea. That would ha' been a mess! But where is it?"
The squad ship descended farther. It followed the lane of carbonizedsoil. That marking narrowed--the _Cerberus_ had plainly been descending.Then the streak came to an end. It pinched out to nothing. The_Cerberus_ should have been at its end.
It wasn't. There was no ship down on Procyron III.
* * * * *
The matter ceased to be routine. If the liner's drive conked out whereProcyron III was the nearest refuge planet, it should have landed hereat least six days ago. Some ship had landed here recently.
"Set down," grunted Sergeant Madden.
Patrolman Willis obeyed. The squad ship came to rest in a minor valley,a few hundred yards from the end of the rocket-blast trail. SergeantMadden got out. Patrolman Willis followed him. This was a duly surveyedand recommended refuge planet. There was no need to check the air ortake precautions against inimical animal or vegetable life. The planetwas safe.
They clambered over small rocky obstacles until they came to the end ofthe scorched line. They surveyed the state of things in silence.
A ship had landed here recently. Its blue-white rocket flames had meltedgulleys in the soil, turned it to slag, and then flung silky, gossamerthreads of slag-wool over the rocks nearby.
At the end of the melted-away hollows, twin slag-lined holes went downdeep into the ground. They were take-off holes. Rockets had burned themdeeply as they gathered force to lift the ship away again.
Sergeant Madden scrambled to the edge of the nearest blast-well. He puthis hand on the now-solidified, glassy slag. It wasn't warm, but itwasn't cold. The glass-lined hole a rocket leaves takes a long time tocool down.
"She landed here, all right," he grunted. "But she took off again beforethe torp arrived to tell us about it."
Willis protested:
"But, sergeant! She only had one set of rockets! She couldn't have takenoff again! She didn't have the rockets to do it with!"
"I know she couldn't," growled the sergeant. "But she did."
The _Cerberus_, once landed, should have waited here. It was not only apolice regulation; it was common sense. When a ship broke down in space,the exclusive hope for that ship's company lay in a refuge planet forships in that traffic lane. Even lifeboats could ordinarily reach somerefuge planet, for picking up later. They couldn't possibly be locatedotherwise. With three dimensions in which to be missed, and light-yearsof distance in which to miss them--no ship or boat had ever been foundas much as a light-week out in space. No ship with a crippled drivecould possibly be helped unless it got to a specified refuge world whereit could be found. No ship which had reached a refuge planet couldconceivably want to leave it.
There was also the fact that no ship which had made such a landing wouldhave extra rockets with which to take off for departure.
The _Cerberus_ had landed. Timmy's girl was on it. It had taken offagain. It was either an impossible mass suicide or something worse. Itcertainly wasn't routine.
Patrolman Willis asked hesitantly:
"D'you think, sergeant, it could be Huks sneaked back--?"
Sergeant Madden did not answer. He went back to the squad ship and armedhimself. Patrolman Willis followed suit. The sergeant boobied the squadship so no unauthorized person could make use of it, and so it woulddisable itself if anyone with expert knowledge tried. Therefore, nobodywith expert knowledge would try.
The two cops began a painstaking quest for police-type evidence to tellthem what had happened, and how and why the _Cerberus_ was missing,after a clumsy but safe landing on Procyron III and when all sanitydemanded that it stay there, and when it was starkly impossible for itto leave.
* * * * *
Sergeant Madden and Patrolman Willis were, self-evidently, the onlyhuman beings on a planet some nine thousand miles in diameter. It waseasy to compute that the nearest other humans would be at least somethousands of thousands of millions of miles away--so far away thatdistance had no meaning. This planet was something over nine-tenthrolling sea, but there were a few tens of thousands of square miles ofsolid ground in the one archipelago that broke the ocean's surface. Itwas such loneliness as very few people ever experience. But they did notnotice it. They were busy.
They went over the ground immediately about the landing place. Rocketflame had splashed it, both at the _Cerberus'_ landing and at theimpossible take-off. There was nothing within a hundred yards not burnedto a crisp. They searched outside that area. Sergeant Madden rumbled tohis companion:
"Where'd the other ship land?"
Patrolman Willis blinked at him.
"There had to be another ship!" said Sergeant Madden irritably. "Tobring the extra rockets. The other ship had to've brought 'em. And ithad to have rockets of its own. There's no spaceport here!"
Patrolman Willis blinked again. Then he saw. The _Cerberus_ carried oneset of emergency-landing rockets, for use in a descent on a refugeplanet if the need arose. The need had arisen and the _Cerberus_ hadused them. Then, from somewhere, another set of rockets had beenproduced for it to use in leaving. Those other rockets must have come onanother ship. But it was a trifle more complicated than that. The_Cerberus_ had carried one set of rockets and used them. One. It hadbeen supplied with another set from somewhere. Two. They must have beenbrought by a ship which also used a set of rockets to land by. That madethree. Then the other ship must have had a fourth set for its owntake-off, or it would be grounded forever on Procyron III.
Patrolman Willis frowned.
"We looked pretty carefully from aloft," he said uncomfortably. "Ifthere'd been another burned-off landing place, we'd have seen it."
"I know," rumbled Sergeant Madden. "And we didn
't. But there must'vebeen another ship aground when the _Cerberus_ came in. Where was it? Itprob'ly knew the _Cerberus_ was landing to wait for help. How? Ifsomebody was coming to help the _Cerberus_ it would be bound to spot theother ship, and it didn't want to be spotted. Why? Anyhow, it must'vetaken the _Cerberus_ and sent it off, and then taken off itself, leavingnothing sensible for us to think. 'Sounds like delinks." Then hegrowled. "Only it's not. There'd have to be too many men. Delinks don'twork together more'n two or three. Too jealous of showin' off. But wherewas that other ship, and what was it doin' here?"
Patrolman Willis hesitated, and then said:
"There used to be pirates, sergeant."
"Uh-huh," said the sergeant. "You had it right