Star Rangers

  The sergeant could not stifle an exclamation of pleasure as the water closed about him, rising from ankle to knee, to waist, as he waded out, feeling cautiously with exploring toes. Zinga kicked up waves, pushing on boldly until his feet were off bottom and he tried his strength against the deeper currents of midstream. Kartr longed for two good hands and to be able to join the Zacathan. The best he could do was duck and let the drops roll down him, washing away the mustiness of the ship, the taint of the too long voyage.

  "If you are now finished with this newly hatched nonsense"-that was Fylh-"may I remind you that we are supposed to be doing a job?"

  Kartr was almost tempted to deny that. He wanted to stay where he was. But the bonds of discipline brought him back to the sand spit where, with the Trystian's help, he pulled on the clothes he had taken a dislike to. Zinga had swum upstream and Kartr looked up just in time to see the yellow-gray body of the Zacathan leap through the mist below the falls. He sent a thought summons flying.

  But then there was a flash of brilliant color, as a bird soared overheard, to distract him. Fylh stood with hands outstretched, a clear whistle swelling out of his throat. The bird changed course and wheeled about the two of them. Then it fluttered down to perch on the Trystian's great thumb claw, answering his trill with liquid notes of its own. Its blue feathers had an almost metallic sheen. For a long time it answered Fylh, and then it took wing again-out over the water. The Trystian's crest was raised proud and high. Kartr drew a full deep breath.

  "That one is beautiful!" He paid tribute.

  Fylh nodded, but there was a hint of sadness about his thin lips as he answered, "It did not really understand me."

  Zinga dripped out of the water, hissing to himself as if he were about to go into battle. He transferred some object he had been holding in one hand to his mouth, chewed with an expression of rapture, and swallowed.

  "The water creatures are excellent," he observed. "Best I've tasted since Vassor City when we had that broiled Katyer dinner! Pity they're so small."

  "I only hope that your immunity shots are still working," Kartr returned scathingly. "If you-"

  "Go all purple and die it will only be my own fault?" The Zacathan finished for him. "I agree. But fresh food is sometimes worth dying for. Formula 1A60 is not my idea of a proper meal. Well, and now where do we wend our way?"

  Kartr studied the plateau from which the river fell. The thick green above looked promising. They dared not venture too far into the unknown with such a small fuel supply and the return journey to plan for. Maybe a flight to the top of that cliff would provide them with a vantage point from which to examine the country beyond. He suggested that.

  "Up it is." Fylh got back in the sled. "But not more than a half mile-unless you are longing to walk back!"

  This time Kartr felt the slight sluggishness of their break away, he strained forward in his seat as if by will power alone he could raise the sled out of the sand and up to the crest of the rock barrier. He knew that Fylh would be able to nurse the last gasp of energy from the machine, but he had no longing to foot it back to the Starfire.

  At the top of the cliff there seemed to be no landing place for them. The trees grew close to the stream edge, thick enough to make a solid carpet of green. But a quarter of a mile from the falls they came upon an island-it was really a miniature mesa, smoothed off almost level-around which the stream cut some twenty feet below. Fylh set the sled down with not more than four feet on either side separating them from the edge. The stone was hot, sun baked, and Kartr stood up in the sled, unslinging visibility lenses.

  On either side of the river the trees and brush grew in an almost impassable wall. But northward he sighted hills, green and rolling, and the river crossed a plain. He was restoring the lenses to their holder when he sensed alien life.

  Down at the edge of the stream a brown-furred animal had emerged from the woods. It squatted by the water to lap and then dabbled its front paws in the current. There was a flicker of silver spinning in the air and the jaws of the beast snapped on the water creature it had flipped out of the river.

  "Splendid!" Zinga paid tribute to the feat. "I couldn't have done any better myself! Not a wasted motion-"

  Delicately Kartr probed the mind behind that furry skull. There was intelligence of a sort and he thought that he might appeal to it if he wished. But the animal did not know man or anything like man. Was this planet a wilderness with no superior life form?

  He asked that aloud and Fylh answered him.

  "Did that bump you received when we landed entirely addle your thinking process? A slice of wilderness may be found on many planets. And because this creature below does not know of any superior to itself does not certify that such do not exist elsewhere-"

  Zinga had propped his head on his two hands and was staring out toward the distant plain and hills.

  "Green hills," he muttered. "Green hills and water full of very excellent food. The Spirit of Space is smiling on us this once. Do you wish to ask questions of our fishing friend below?"

  "No. And it is not alone. Something grazes behind that clump of pointed trees and there are other lives. They fear each other-they live by claw and fang-"

  "Primitive," catalogued Fylh, and then conceded generously, "Perhaps you are right, Kartr. Perhaps there is no human or Bemmy overlord in this world."

  "I trust not," Zinga raised both his first and second eyelids to their fullest extent. "I long to pit my wits-daring adventurer style-against some fiendish, intelligent monster-"

  Kartr grinned. For some reason he had always found the reptile-ancestored brain of the Zacathan more closely akin to his own thinking processes than he ever did Fylh's cool detachment. Zinga entered into life with zest, while the Trystian was, in spite of physical participation, always the onlooker.

  "Maybe we can locate some settlement of your fiendish monsters among those hills," he suggested.

  "What about it, Fylh, dare we try to reach them?"

  "No." Fylh was measuring with a claw tip the gage on the control panel. "We've enough to get us back to the ship from here and that is all."

  "If we all hold our breath and push," murmured the Zacathan. "All right. And if we have to set down, we'll walk. There is nothing better than to feel good hot sand ooze up between one's toes-" He sighed languorously.

  The sled arose, startling the brown-coated fisherman. It sat on its haunches, one dripping paw raised, to watch them go. Kartr caught its mild astonishment-but it had no fear of them. It had few enemies and did not expect those to fly through the air. As they swung around Kartr tried an experiment and sent a darting flash of good will into that primitive brain. He looked back. The animal had risen to its hind legs and stood, man fashion, its front paws dangling loosely, staring after the sled.

  They passed over the falls so low that the spray beaded their skins. Kartr caught his lower lip between his teeth and bit down on it. Was that only Fylh's flying or did power failure drive them down? He had no desire to ask that question openly.

  "To follow the river back," Zinga pointed out, "is to take the long way round. If we cut across country from that peak we ought to hit the ship-"

  Kartr saw and nodded. "How about it, Fylh? Stick to the water or not?"

  The Trystian hunched his shoulders in his equivalent of a shrug. "Quicker, yes." And he pointed the sled's bow to the right.

  They left the stream thread. A carpet of trees lay beneath them and then a scrubby clearing in which a group of five red-brown animals grazed. One tossed its head skyward and Kartr saw the sun glint on long cruel horns.

  "I wonder," mused Zinga, "if they ever do any disputing with our river-bank friend. He had some pretty formidable claws-and those horns are not just for adornment. Or maybe they have some kind of treaty of nonaggression-"

  "Then," observed Fylh, "they would be locked in deadly combat most of the time!"

  "You know"-Zinga stared at the back of Fylh's crested head fondly-"you're a very useful Bemmy
, my friend. With you along we never have to wear ourselves out expecting the worst-you have it all figured out for us. What would we ever do without your dark, dark eyes fixed upon the future?"

  The trees and shrubs below were growing fewer. Rock and sections of baked, creviced earth and the queer, twisted plants which seemed native to the desert appeared in larger and larger patches.

  "Wait!" Kartr's hand shot out to touch Fylh's arm. "To the right-there!"

  The sled obediently swooped and came down on a patch of level earth. Kartr scrambled out, brushed through the fringe of stunted bush to come out upon the edge of what he had sighted from the air. The other two joined him.

  Zinga dropped upon one knee and touched the white section almost gingerly. "Not natural," he gave his verdict.

  Sand and earth had drifted and buried it. Only here had some freak of the scouring wind cleared that patch to betray it. Pavement-an artificial pavement!

  Zinga went to the right, Fylh left, for perhaps forty feet. They squatted and, using their belt knives, dug into the soil. Within seconds each had uncovered a hard surface.

  "A road!" Kartr kicked more sand away. "Surface transportation here at one time then. How long ago do you guess?"

  Fylh shifted the loosened soil through his claws. "Here is heat and dryness, and, I think, not too many storms. Also the vegetation does spread as it would in jungle country. It may be ten years-ten hundred or-"

  "Ten thousand!" Kartr ended for him. But the spark of excitement within him was being fanned into more vigorous life. So there had been superior life here! Man-or something-had built a road on which to travel. And roads usually led to-

  The sergeant turned to Fylh. "Do you think we could pry enough fuel out of the main drive to bring the sled back here with the tailer mounted?"

  Fylh considered. "We might-if we didn't need fuel for anything else."

  Kartr's excitement faded. They would need it for other work. The Commander and Mirion would have to be transported on it when they left the ship-supplies carried-all that they would require to set up a camp in the more hospitable hill country. He kicked regretfully at the patch of pavement. Once it would have been his duty as well as his pleasure to follow that thin clue to its source. Now it was his duty to forget it. He walked heavily back to the sled and none of them spoke as they were again airborne.

  3 - MUTINY

  They circled the crumpled length of the Starfire and saw a figure waving from a point near her nose.

  When they landed the sled Jaksan was waiting.

  "Well?" he demanded harshly, almost before the sand had fallen away from the keel of the sled.

  "There's good, open, well-watered land to the north," Kartr reported. "Animal life in a wilderness-"

  "Eatable water creatures!" Zinga broke in, licking his lips at the memory.

  "Any indications of civilization?"

  "An old road, buried-nothing else. The animals know no superior life form. We had the recorder on-I can run the wire through for the Commander-"

  "If he wants it-"

  "What do you mean!" The tone in Jaksan's voice brought Kartr up short, the reel of spy wire clutched in his good hand.

  "Commander Vibor," Jaksan's answer came cold and hard, "believes it our duty to remain with the ship-"

  "But why?" asked the sergeant in honest bewilderment.

  Nothing was ever going to raise the Starfire again. It was folly not to realize that at once and make plans on that basis. Kartr did now what he seldom dared to attempt, tried to read the surface mind of the arms officer. There was worry there, worry and something else-a surprising, puzzling resentment when Jaksan thought of him, Kartr, or of any of the rangers. Why? Did it stem back to the fact that the ranger sergeant was not a child of the Service, had not been reared of a Patrol family in the tight grip of tradition and duty, as had the other human members of the crew? Was it because he was termed a

  Bemmy lover and alien? He accepted that resentment as a fact, pigeonholed the memory of it to recall when he had to work with Jaksan in the future.

  "Why?" The arms officer repeated Kartr's question. "A commander has responsibilities-even a ranger should realize that. Responsibilities-"

  "Which doom him to starve to death in a broken ship?" cut in Zinga. "Come now, Jaksan. Commander

  Vibor is an intelligent life form-"

  Kartr's fingers moved in the old warning signal. The Zacathan caught it and fell silent while the sergeant cut in quickly on the heels of the other's last word.

  "He will undoubtedly wish to see the record tape before making any plans anyway."

  "The Commander is blind!"

  Kartr stopped short. "You are sure?"

  "Smitt is. Tork might have been able to help him. We don't have the skill-the wounds go beyond the help of the medic-first-aid."

  "Well, I'll report." Kartr started toward the ship, feeling as if he carried several pounds of lead in the sole of each boot and some vast and undefinable burden had settled down upon his shoulders.

  Why, he asked himself dispiritedly as he climbed through the lock of the port, did he have this depression? Certainly leadership now in no way fell upon him. Both Jaksan and Smitt outranked a sergeant-as a warrant officer of rangers he was just barely within the borderline of the Service as it was. But even knowing that did nothing to free him from this unease.

  "Kartr reporting, sir!" He came to attention before the masked man propped up against two bedrolls in the lounge.

  "Your report-" The request was mechanical. Kartr began to wonder if the other really heard him, or, hearing, understood a word he said.

  "We have crashed near the edge of a desert. By sled the scouting party traveled north along a river to a well-watered, forested tract. Because of the limited supply of fuel our cruising range was curtailed.

  But there is a section to the north which looks promising as a base for a camp-"

  "Life indications?"

  "Many animals of different types and breeds-on a low scale of intelligence. Only trace of civilization is a portion of roadway so covered as to argue long disuse. Animals have no memory of contact with superior life forms."

  "Dismissed."

  But Kartr did not go. "Pardon, sir, but have I your permission to break out what is left of the main drive energy supply to use when we arrange for transportation-"

  "The ship's supply? Are you completely mad? Certainly not! Report to Jaksan for repair party duty-"

  Repair party? Did Vibor honestly believe that there was the slightest chance of repairing the Starfire?

  Surely- The ranger hesitated at the door of the lounge and half turned to go back. But, guessing the uselessness of any further appeal made to Vibor, he went on to the rangers' quarters where he found the others gathered. A smaller figure just within the doorway turned out to be Smitt, who got up to face Kartr as he came in.

  "Any luck, Kartr?"

  "He told me to report for repair party duty. Great Winds of Space, what does he mean?"

  "You may not believe it," answered the com-techneer, "but he means just what he says. We are supposed to be repairing this hulk for a take-off-"

  "But can't he see-?" began Kartr and then bit his lip, remembering. That was just it-the

  Commander could not see the present condition of the wrecked ship. But that was no excuse for

  Jaksan or Smitt not making it plain to him-

  As if he was able to pick that thought out of the air the com-techneer answered:

  "He won't listen to us. I was ordered to my quarters when I tried to tell him. And Jaksan's only agreed with every order he's issued!"

  "But why would he do that? Jaksan's no fool, he knows that we aren't going to lift again. The Starfire's done for."

  Smitt leaned back against the wall. He was a small man, thin and tough and almost black with space tan. And now he appeared to share a portion of Fylh's almost malicious detachment. The only things he had ever really loved were his communicators. Kartr had seen him once furtiv
ely stroking the smooth plastic of their sides with a loving hand. Because of the old division of the ship's personnel-Patrol crew and rangers-Kartr did not know him very well.

  "You can easily accept the idea that we're through," the com-techneer was saying now. "You've never been tied to this hunk of metal the way we are. Your duty is on planets-not in space. The Starfire is a part of Vibor-he can't just walk into the wide blue now and forget all about her- Neither can

  Jaksan."

  "All right. I can believe that the ship might mean more to you, her regular crew, than she does to us," agreed Kartr almost wearily. "But she's a dead ship now and nothing any of us or all of us can do will make her ready to lift again. We'd best leave her-try to establish a base somewhere near food and water-"