The Outposter

  "Yes," he answered. His jaw was set so hard the muscles were aching. "People worship's not a bad religion once you get it through your head that your god-object's got all the faults any single human ever had. So don't expect people to act like gods, or even like noblemen, just because you've helped them on their way toward heaven. The human animal's what it always was, and the impor­tant thing is to save people's lives and souls if you can, not that they lie, cheat, take bribes, or kill. Because they'll turn on you when you've done your best for them and hang you high in the sun as a warning to anyone else who thinks the worship of one's fellowman is a soft and easy service! And you can count on that!"

  Once more as the words leaped from him, he had time to feel surprise at the way she could trigger off the utterance of his private thoughts. Having spoken, he shrank a little in­side himself, in anticipation of what she would say to this latest bit of self-confession. But the answer he flinched from never came. They were only halfway across the open ground to the trees when the warning siren whooped.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mark wrenched the controls of the ground car, and it jerked about, almost throwing Ulla out. She clung to the handrail on the fire wall before her as the vehicle raced toward a different patch of wood some three quarters of a mile from the station buildings. They slid in among the trees, leaving a trail of dust and disturbed ground litter like smoke in the air behind them. Mark jerked the car to a stop beside an open, circular pit about five feet deep in which Paul sat surrounded by a ring of sensory equipment hastily pulled from its proper building back at the station.

  Mark jumped from the car before it had ac­tually stopped shuddering from the hard back air blast that had halted it. He dropped into the pit beside Paul.

  "What've you got?" he asked.

  "Three," answered Paul without looking up. "Coming up planetary in orbit around east sunside, velocity four, acceleration none, mass eighteen."

  Mark glanced into the scan cube and saw the three points of light to which Paul referred. An orbit velocity of four and no com­parable acceleration of the three Meda V'Dan ships would mean that they had already killed their interworld true speed and achieved orbit on the night side of Garnera VI. They were coming around to the dawn line by calculation just when that would put them over Abruzzi Fourteen Station. At mass eighteen, they would be ships about double the size of the Navy scout ships and, it went without saying, with five to eight times the offensive weaponry.

  Mark reached past Paul's shoulder to unhook the command phone and call the en­trenched plasma rifles taken from the two scouts still on the landing area before the sta­tion. Paul was busily juggling his controls to keep the orbiting Meda V'Dan in scan—they were still a good ninety degrees or so below horizon line of sight—and he swayed his body sideways to give Mark access to the phone.

  "Guns?" Mark said into the mouthpiece of the phone.

  "Guns here," answered the voice of Brot.

  "Attention," said Mark. "Three bandits, ex­pected at—"

  "Fourteen minutes," said Paul. "Thirteen ..."

  "In about twelve minutes," said Mark, "count from now and dropping. Spal?"

  "Sir," said the ex-Marine from a speaker box before Paul, "both plasma rifles and crews ready to fire."

  "Fine," said Mark. "Don't fire until I tell you. We don't want to warn them off until you can get a good shot at them."

  "Understood, sir."

  "Fine. Ships?"

  The voice of Race answered from one of the two hidden scout ships, "Sir."

  "Orval?"

  "Sir," the voice of the other outposter sounded from the second ship.

  "You've heard the transmissions," said Mark. "Three bandits moving this way from orbit in now ten minutes and minus. Don't move until I call you airborne, then hold air, but below the horizon until I give you the attack word. Stay a good two miles apart and don't try to take on anything more than a wounded ship close to the ground. The bandits are double your size and any of them could chew you both up in half a minute at five hundred feet of altitude. Stay low. Follow orders. Understood?"

  "Understood." The answer came back from both outposters at once.

  "Hand weapons," said Mark.

  "Sir," responded the harsh voice of Brot, "I've been listening. All groups of gunmen dug in and ready."

  "Thank you, sir," said Mark. "Wait for orders."

  "Understood."

  "Stand by, all," said Mark. He took the phone from his mouth and looked once more at the instruments in front of Paul. Glancing up from this, he saw Ulla still sitting frozen in the ground car.

  "Get down here," he called to her. "Down inside, and sit with your back to the side of the pit, out from underfoot."

  He saw that she moved to obey, and he went back to studying the instruments.

  "What's the readout?" he asked Paul. Paul glanced at a silvery tape with black numbers on it, slowly spewing out of a slot in a box near his feet.

  "Can't tell much," Paul answered, after a second. "Large fixed weapons both fore and aft on each ship, of course. No index on smaller weapons yet—too much distance. They'll have to drop down from orbit before we can be sure of smaller guns,"

  He fell silent. The minutes ticked off.

  "Here comes the first one now," he said. "Others at interval—"

  His words were drowned out by a thunder­clap of sound. Instinctively, all three of them at the command post jerked their heads back to look upward. High against the clear, cloud­less, brightening blue of the dawn sky was a black speck, almost directly overhead.

  "About four thousand only. Just inside long range," the voice of Spal, finishing a sentence, was coming from the black box. "Request fire permission."

  "Negative," said Mark.

  There was a second thunderclap. Then a third. Three specks swam in the blue depths overhead.

  "Hand-weapon groups ready," said Mark into the phone.

  "Ready, sir," said Brot's voice.

  One of the specks seemed to jerk away from the other two. Then it commenced falling in a long shallow curve that at first looked as if it would take the ship out of sight over the horizon. But then the speck slowed its fall and began to grow larger. It swelled before them to a dot, to an egg shape, to an oval—

  "Hand-weapons group, fire at command," said Mark.

  "Understood."

  The tiny shape of the Meda V'Dan ship seemed just above the horizon. Suddenly, it leaped at them from that position.

  "Fire!" The voice of Brot came from the loudspeaker box.

  White fingers of light—bright even in the growing daylight—stretched up from the clumps of trees immediately surrounding the station, rising from all sides until they met in an apex area just above the station buildings. The light fingers hung there like a tent of searchlight beams, and the attacking Meda V'Dan ship flicked through them.

  The ground jarred to the impact of another air concussion and the rolling battering of several heavy explosions. Then the attacking ship was gone and three of the station build­ings, including a corner of the Residence, were burning. The flames flickered with diffi­culty against the smothering effect of the athermal coating, sprayed on all exposed sur­faces the day before. A little smoke rose.

  Down in the landing area, one of the stand­ing scout ships showed a black gash in its side from which little flames licked.

  "Cease fire," said Brot. "Report, group cap­tains."

  There was a momentary pause.

  "Hand-weapons report," came Brot's voice again. "Sir, no group hit, no one hurt. Of course they didn't expect we'd be out here, firing back. Next time we'll feel it."

  "Change position of groups."

  "Accomplished already, sir."

  "Fine. Guns?"

  "Sir," said Spal's voice again.

  "Stand ready," said Mark. "The bandits know we've got men with hand weapons around the station now. They'll probably try a run on all three ships first. If they do, hold your fire and leave it to hand weapons. W
e want to force them to come in and hang so close you can't miss, before we let them know you're there. On straight runs like these last, they'll have trouble hitting the hand-weapons positions."

  "Coming," Paul's voice was almost an inter­ruption, it followed so closely on Mark's last words to the ex-Marine. "All three!"

  "Hand weapons, fire at group command," said Mark. "Guns, ships—hold fire."

  The three specks were now falling toward the horizon together. There was a moment of breathless waiting, and then all three sprang past above the station at eye-baffling speed. The triple thunder of their passing concus­sion stunned the people on the ground.

  Once more the tent of hand-weapons beams had lifted over the station buildings, and the buildings this time showed no new damage. But treetops in every clump of trees for half a mile from the station were burning.

  "Cease fire," said Brot's voice. "Report, captains."

  Paul grunted with satisfaction among his instruments.

  "Got their index that time," he said. "Com­plete readout. They run four to six light weap­ons apiece amidships. Seventeen mounted weapons among them all."

  "Ships, guns, hand weapons?" said Mark. "Did you hear that, all of you? Ships, you look out for those midship weapons in particular when you tangle with the bandits. In close, they can do as much damage as the big guns fore and aft."

  "Two groups wiped out," said Brot, his hard voice unchanged in tone. "Six of ten in another. All other eight groups untouched. We hit anything?"

  "Paul?" Mark looked over at the other outposter. Paul glanced over the instruments to his right.

  "Readout index shows some damage to the third bandit to pass," he answered. "Hull may be pierced just ahead of the drive units. Could be crippling hit, could not. Other ban­dits just scarred."

  "Sir," said Brot. "With permission, will change my fire patterns."

  "Go ahead," said Mark.

  "Thank you, sir."

  "Here they come," said Paul.

  Once more there was the thunder of passage and the tent of white beams—a tent now elongated in shape. Staring up toward the western sky, Mark saw the three specks climbing—the last one lagging behind the other two.

  "Think we hurt him?" Mark looked at Paul, who frowned over his instruments.

  "Index inconclusive," Paul answered. "Could be."

  "Guns," said Mark into the phone. "Alert on next pass. We may have a cripple."

  But the concussions of the next pass shook them unchanged. And the specks climbing the western wall of the sky afterward held tight formation.

  "Two additional groups hit hard," said Brot. "Four lightly. Two untouched. Six groups now operational. Moving all groups."

  "Sir," said Spal. "The bandits are running the same pattern over us each time. I can get two of three."

  "Negative," said Mark. "Repeat negative. Your two weapons represent our only really effective firepower source. Hold until or­dered."

  "Sir."

  "Paul," said Mark, looking at the other out-poster. "Nothing more on index about that third bandit's damages?"

  Paul shook his head.

  "Coming again," he said.

  "Stand by," Mark told the phone. "Hand weapons, fire at group command. All others hold."

  Once more came the passage of the Meda V'Dan ships. The tree clumps had also been sprayed with athermal against the Meda V'Dan fire weapons, but most of them were now blackened and scorched badly, and three of them had ceased to exist, looking as if the place of their growth had been trampled by some great, burning foot.

  "Five groups operational," said Brot's un­emotional voice.

  "They won't keep this up too long," said Mark, half to himself, half to Paul. "They can't land as long as the hand-weapon groups are there, and they can't wipe out the hand-weapon groups without slowing down on their passes or hovering above the station." He picked up the phone.

  "Guns, ships, hand weapons?" he said. "At­tention, all. Be alert for a change of tactics by bandits on next pass."

  "Coming," said Paul.

  "On their way now," said Mark into the phone.

  Triple thunder echoed as the Meda V'Dan ships flashed past at the same speed as be­fore.

  "Light hits," said Brot's voice. "All five groups still operational—look out, they're back!"

  The Meda V'Dan ships were suddenly above the station once more. They had flipped just below the horizon level and returned. They skidded to a stop in midair, some five hun­dred feet above the station and its surround­ing area.

  "Guns!" shouted Mark. "Guns! Fire at will!"

  With sizzling roars, two thick white ropes of incandescence reached up from tree clumps nearly a mile on either side of the station buildings. One Meda V'Dan ship, touched squarely in the belly by the discharge of the fixed weapon on the command post side of the station, fell out of formation immedi­ately, yawing and corkscrewing earthward until it landed in a long slewed slide and lay still, a black smoking gape in its hull.

  The ship touched by the far plasma rifle slewed about and lost altitude, but then pulled up and tried to turn back away from the position of the rifle that had damaged it. But this brought it again over the station, and the hand weapons scored it.

  "Ships!" Mark was shouting into the phone. "A cripple! Take it! Quick—but keep low."

  He glanced at the third, the untouched Meda V'Dan vessel which was now climbing swiftly, unhurt, into the eastern sky. But it showed no sign of turning back to rescue its partner ships.

  "Paul, monitor that one getting away," said Mark. His voice was drowned in the howl of torn air as the two hidden scout ships flashed into view over the horizon.

  At the sight of them, the cripple tried once more, desperately, to gain altitude. But the ef­fort evidently exhausted its damaged drive capabilities. Its nose dropped and it went earthward in a long slant to avoid the guns of the two scout ships closing in upon it.

  "Cease fire, ships! Cease fire, all but hand weapons covering downed bandits!" shouted Mark into the phone. "Hand weapons covering ships hold fire but return any fire from bandits."

  He turned to Paul.

  "What about the third one?"

  "Going . . . gone," said Paul, pointing at the scan tube. "He's not even stopping to orbit out."

  Mark straightened up. For the first time he realized he had spent the whole time of the battle crouched over the phone and the instru­ments. His back felt stiff and painful, and when he closed his mouth after speaking, his teeth gritted together.

  He became conscious of the fact that there was dust in his mouth. In fact, the whole area between himself and the station—and prob­ably beyond as well for an equal distance— was hazed with smoke and dust. He looked at Paul and saw what the other man was grey-faced with dust, as was Ulla, when he turned to look at her.

  She was sitting motionless against the vertical dirt wall of the pit, as if she, as well as he, had held the same position all through the battle. He stepped over to her and held out his hand.

  "It's all over," he said. "I'll take you back to the Residence now—or someplace else if that's been burned out."

  She took his hand and let him lift her to her feet without a word.

  "Be with you in a second," he said. "You can get in the ground car."

  He turned back to Paul, who was pulling connections on some of the communications equipment that was now out of operation.

  "Better keep somebody on watch at the scan cube for the next few days, just in case," Mark said. "The rest of the equipment can go back up to the station without waiting."

  Paul nodded.

  Mark turned away and went back to Ulla, who was brushing dust from her hands and face. Silently, they climbed out of the pit and got into the ground car together. Mark put the vehicle in motion, swung it around, and head­ed back toward the Residence.

  Ulla said nothing until they were almost back at the Residence, which it seemed had suffered only the mild initial damage sus­tained on the first Meda V'Dan pass.
But when she did speak, her words were disconcerting.

  "That business you mentioned about people hanging you high in the sun when they were through with you, to teach others that they weren't easy to serve," she said. "Do you really expect something like that to happen to you some day?"

  He looked at her, but her face was honestly troubled and questioning.

  "I don't just think it might," he said. "I know it will."

  She looked to the front again, and a moment later he drew the car up in front of the main door of the Residence. She got out without either of them saying any more to each other, and he wheeled the car away to supervise the beginning of the cleanup—for a little while before exhaustion finally claimed its right and sent him staggering to his bed.

  Chapter Thirteen

  "There's a way around it," said Mark.

  He sat drinking crushed rum cocktails with Admiral-General Jaseth Showell in the wide, softly carpeted living room of Showell's suite at Navy Base HQ. Ulla was across the room. A ten-by-twelve-foot sealed window gave a view of the square miles of airless space occupied by the ranked spaceships, docks, barracks, administrative and hospital structures that made up Outer Navy Base. The light of the GA star, which Navy slang had nicknamed "Murgatroyd's Onion," shone unchangeably upon this multitude of metal bodies, the larger ones with checkerboard hulls of alternate silver and black squares.

  "You and I know," Mark went on, "that they're liable to distort things back at the Earth-City because they don't understand what it's like out here."

  "Yes," murmured Jaseth. The little grey­headed man was watching Mark with the polite but unwinking interest of a robin examining a working mound of soft ground that night at any moment reveal a worm.

  "Nobody could be more pleased than we are —my foster father and I," said Mark, "by the flattering attention we've been getting back at the Earth-City since we captured those Meda V'Dan renegades. I ought to include the way the other outposters at the station feel about that. I might even throw in our colonists, too. They've really had a shot in the arm. Produc­tion's way up. And of course that's what we're all out here for—to get production up and our Colonies standing on their own feet."