Mission Earth Volume 1: The Invaders Plan

  Amazingly, dusk was falling. Perhaps it was just dropping lower behind the first range of the Blikes, but it seemed awfully dark. It’s not a country to land in, in the dark!

  I quickly chose a landing spot. It was a little plateau. Grassy, a few scrub trees. It was right on the edge of a three-thousand-foot drop down to a white running river. But there was a line of rock at the edge that jutted up.

  “Land!” I ordered.

  He did. He shut off the drives. What beautiful quiet! Just the hiss of wind through the scrub trees and the mutter of water far below in that gorge. I relaxed. Delightful. After a bit I got out and walked over to the piles of rocks that rose at the edge of the cliff. I climbed up. There was an animal path on the other side, a couple of caves and way, way below, the water. My, it was black down there: already you could see no more than some white foam.

  The driver had gotten some sticks together. I put a little firepowder on them and when the air soaked into it, the blaze crackled happily. It was cool and it was getting very dark.

  The driver ripped the feathers off the thrillers and we put them on sticks and began to roast them. After half an hour of fond attention, they were done.

  I was sitting on a boulder, eating a thriller. The fire was bright. Beyond it sat the driver eating another bird. I had just reached back for another stick.

  WHAP!

  The blastshot was right where my head had been!

  The heavy concussion blew the fire out totally!

  Believe me, I scrambled!

  The driver heard me going and he followed. I got over the mound of rocks at the cliff edge and got to the other side. If my driver hadn’t plowed into me, almost knocking me loose, he would have gone three thousand feet down!

  I crouched down on the animal trail on the cliff. I was not going to peer over the top of those rocks. Not yet!

  “I was right,” said the driver. “Somebody followed us!”

  “Get up there and peek over,” I said.

  He scrambled a bit. A rock came loose and started a small avalanche. That sound was what did it!

  A spray of blastfire roared over the top of the rocks. The concussion was awful! Whoever it was was using a fangun! It is a weapon that puts out electric fire in a forty-degree front arc! No hunting weapon that! No gamekeeper weapon! That was military! My Gods, who was after us? The Army?

  “Maybe they made a mistake,” said the driver. And before I could stop him, he yelled, “Hey! This is just us!”

  Another fangun blast! This time it actually took some of the tops off the protective wall rocks. Splinters, melted rock, spattered us.

  But the enemy, whoever it was, had made a mistake. He or they had given me light to see by. We were crouched on an animal path. About ten feet to our left was a cave. Three thousand feet down was the river, unseen now. It was black night!

  “It’s robbers,” said the driver. It is true that people were often robbed in these mountains. But it wasn’t true that he had ever learned much working with the contrabandists.

  ROOOOOOOOAR!

  They or whoever it was were shooting at his voice!

  But I am up to such things. I whispered to the driver, “Can you do a dwindling scream?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Well, you just better imitate what I do. As soon as I do it, I will dive for that cave and as soon as I do it, you do it and dive for that cave. Understand?”

  “I don’t know how!” he whispered. The idiot. It is right in the training manuals.

  I shouted, “Go away!”

  ROOOOOAR!

  I shouted a dwindling scream. When you do it right it sounds like it is declining in the distance. Whoever it was would think they’d made a hit and knocked me off the edge. I was diving for the cave.

  My driver, prompted by necessity and probably on the verge of screaming anyway, imitated it for all he was worth. He spoiled it a little bit because when he hit his knee landing in the cave beside me he said, “(Bleep)!”

  We crouched there. After a few minutes a light played down over the path where we had been. We hugged back out of sight in the cave.

  The light went off.

  Then, mysteriously, a couple of minor shots sounded. Then a crackle of flames.

  Finally, in the distance, there was a screech of a vehicle’s drives starting up and then a roar as it went away. The sound racketed around the mountains and died out.

  I became brave. I sent the driver up to look.

  “My Gods!” he said at the top.

  He was still standing there and hadn’t been shot so I went up.

  “We’re stranded in the Blike Mountains!” said the driver.

  The airbus was burning.

  “Good,” I said.

  “But we can’t cross those mountains! Even in the passes the air is too thin.”

  I suddenly remembered that my driver had a name. I never used it. Now was the time. “Ske, have you ever dreamed of the sylvan life, the woods, the trees, the streams? Living off nature? With no cares?”

  It had no appeal, apparently. He started cursing like fury and ran down and started throwing sand on the wreck. I didn’t help him at all. It was just the engine burning. Whoever it was had fired a shot into the fuel capacitors and another one into the generator converter. That engine would never run again.

  I hummed happily. I found my needle blastrifle in the brush. I found my game bag and the ammunition. I pulled somewhat toasted sweetbuns out of the back and somewhat boiled sparklewater from under the driver’s seat. And while I was doing this, I suddenly beheld that the toolbox lid was open and the toolbox was empty.

  I sat down and began to laugh. I laughed and laughed. It was the first time I had laughed for a long while. The driver, who had gotten the engine fire down to a flicker, looked at me a little scared. Well, maybe I did sound a bit hysterical.

  “What’s so funny?” he demanded.

  “The money! It’s gone!” And I went off into another spasm. “They followed us in to rob us. They cut their engines way back and coasted in. They crept up carefully. They thought they killed us. And . . .” It was so rich I had to laugh and laugh again. The driver got me by the shoulders to steady me or shake me or something. I didn’t mind. I sat down and laughed some more. Finally, I could talk again.

  “They did it all to rob us of counterfeit money! Spreading that much around they will start a major investigation. And they’ll be executed out of hand!”

  Ske didn’t think it was funny. “All I know is, we’re completely off all traffic lines, we don’t have any communication at all, we can’t walk out of here and we’re surrounded by deep canyons and a country full of savage beasts.”

  “That’s the nice part of it,” I said.

  I watched him build up the cooking fire again; whoever it was would just think the airbus was still burning if they looked back and saw a pinpoint of light. He located some of the game birds and began to pick the dust and rocks off them. I sat there grinning.

  Gone was Tug One. Gone was Heller. Far away was the Countess Krak. If found, I could even explain to Lombar we were looking for the patrol craft he had ordered burned and we crashed.

  I was looking ahead to happy years in this wilderness full of game. All my problems were solved.

  Looking back, I wish it had been so. How wrong I was to feel happy that night!

  PART SEVEN

  Chapter 5

  At the end of three weeks, my “idyll of primitive atavism” came to an abrupt end.

  I awoke from a dreamless, lovely sleep to find a hunting blastgun prodding my chin.

  These valleys between the ranges were the heavens themselves: grassy plateaus, stately forests, picturesque rock formations, streams which rippled or roared in an interesting complexity, surrounded all about by majestic snow-crowned peaks!

  Songbirds and an infinite variety of game abounded and fed the stomach and the eyes and ears alike.

  Day after day we had wandered, from one enticing campsite
to the next, each one seemingly more charming than the last.

  I had a bit of trouble with my driver, Ske. Because one has to have the identification impress on the vehicle frame, or one can’t get a replacement, he had insisted, at great labor—since he had no tools—in hammering that section off, using rocks, using twists to heat the metal so it would break. It had taken him hours and hours. The result was that he was left carrying a twenty-foot piece of vehicle frame, quite heavy and cumbersome, always getting in the road when he scrambled down cliffs or tried to go through dense trees.

  He also had to carry the toasted sweetbuns and the remains of sparklewater in its warped containers as well as some singed upholstery I was using for blankets. When you added to this the weight of recent kills, one could imagine that it was a burden. And as I wandered along, pausing to admire the view, savor the redolent perfume of the air or take a shot at some songbird, I was nevertheless aware of his critical stares at my back when he thought I was not looking.

  One day, as I sauntered up a steep path, and after he had fallen back down three times, tripped by the vehicle frame’s propensity for gouging into the dirt, I heard him muttering. And so, while he stood teetering on the unfirm path, I took the time to try to put him right. I sat down on a boulder and began to explain to him what this was all about.

  I told him that every being had in him a throwback, an atavism, to the primitive; I went into considerable technical details, all in the best traditions of Earth psychology. I even analyzed him as having an atavism deficiency. And all the thanks I got was him falling down the path again and this time swearing!

  But, undaunted, I essayed another approach. When he got back up to me again, I explained how every sentient being of our type had yet retained, left over from evolution, a reptile brain below and between the lobes. This brain was what prompted blind leadership. I even drew him a picture of it in the slanted dirt. And then I diagnosed his trouble as a reptile brain deficiency that made him blind to the necessity of blindly following where I led. But once more all the thanks I got was him falling down to the bottom once more.

  However, I did not permit this problem to blunt the acute pleasure I was taking in my stroll across this vast land. Not only did it have no Tug One in it, it had neither Heller nor Krak and only the faintest shadow of Lombar Hisst.

  As days proceeded onward, I must have shot at least five hundred songbirds. Some of them, when they fell, were hard to get to or only wounded and my driver often had trouble recovering them, burdened as he was.

  But he was making his own trouble. I told him to throw away the identoframe: we would never again have need of an airbus, so why carry the frame you have to turn in to get a replacement? I just couldn’t seem to get through to him about this.

  He couldn’t be taught in other ways as well. Each time we would make a camp, instead of locating dry wood, he would start a fire with the greenest bark to hand and for the last half-hour of daylight, huge columns of white smoke would rise like pillars into the air, absolutely towering into the sky. I tried and tried but I couldn’t break him of it. I decided he was simply atavism deficient!

  Thus, when the cold muzzle of the gun awoke me that dawn, I was not too surprised to hear my driver talking in a rather high, urgent voice when any atavistic impulse would have been to shut up!

  “. . . And so we almost had the contrabandists and they up and shot us down!” Ske was saying. “But true to our duty, we have been following them day after day, scouting on their trail. They left fantastic amounts of evidence behind. You just look at that game bag! We found it just last night and it’s full of fancy feathers!”

  One always studies the enemy. The two fellows who had us were dressed in the green of game wardens. They had the emblem of some Lord sewn on their chests. They looked very ugly. They were heavily armed. I heard a twig snap back under the trees and knew there was a third one back there, covering us.

  “And,” Ske was saying, his voice pitched even higher, “to prove that we flushed them and that they fled afraid of us, look at that needle blastgun they left behind!”

  “Ah,” said a three-hundred-pound brute, the other one that wasn’t holding the gun on my chin. He picked up my needlegun. “We’ll just confiscate this. Nice gun.”

  “Evidence of the Crown,” I said hastily. “You must not tamper with legal evidence!”

  “This,” said the three-hundred-pounder impressively, “is Lord Mok’s preserve. All half-million acres of it. And anything found in it is Lord Mok’s!”

  For “Lord Mok’s,” I thought, substitute “game warden’s.”

  The gun muzzle bruised my chin with a poke. “Get up. We’re taking you in!”

  I noticed for the first time that they had a rope around Ske’s neck. The “you” didn’t seem to include Ske as the three-hundred-pounder seemed to be looking about for a limb to hang him from. Oh, well, I thought. One can always get a replacement driver.

  Ske did not seem to take to the idea of being hanged. But instead of groveling, he grabbed the rope to slacken it and drew himself up tall. Not very tall as he isn’t very big.

  “That!” said Ske, pointing dramatically at me, “is Officer Gris of the Apparatus! He is on a secret mission for the Emperor!” His voice could be heard for a mile!

  It produced an interesting effect. Three men emerged from the trees and came forward at a run with leveled guns! It looked like there was going to be a double hanging right now!

  Ske had freed himself for an instant. He dived to my side. He yanked open the flap of a pocket, grabbed out my communication disk and screamed into it, “For the sake of the Gods, don’t fire! Officer Gris will be in your range!” It was a pretty silly thing to do as we were about ten times the distance that that communication disk could reach.

  Ske whispered to me frantically, “Tell them they’re all under arrest!”

  I blinked. The yokels had all hauled up. They were suspended, looking up and around anxiously. Yokels, indeed. Lord Mok didn’t hire smart men for game wardens.

  I got up. “You’re all under arrest,” I said.

  “For posing as game wardens!” shouted Ske.

  This hanging or battle or whatever it had been about to become, disintegrated into, “We’ve got credentials!” and “How do we know you are an Officer Gris?” and that sort of thing.

  Everybody showed everybody their badges. Ske ran around pushing my identoplate into people’s faces.

  They finally told me that they’d have to keep the needlegun and game bag as “evidence” we’d actually been following poachers. And they said they had a supply plane leaving their preserve headquarters the next morning for Government City and we could hitch a ride on it.

  Ske seemed very elated and almost cheering.

  I wasn’t. It seemed like the sky had fallen in. I was very certain that catastrophe awaited me. The very thought of going back made my stomach hurt!

  PART SEVEN

  Chapter 6

  Dispiritedly, I sat and watched the Transport Issue Clerk.

  The wardens had dropped us off at the Apparatus Vehicle Center in Government City, not even thanking me for the needlegun and game bag.

  Ske had lugged in the frame from the wreck and the Transport Issue Clerk, instead of giving Ske a blast, had practically cooed over it. Ske had written out a report—Crash in Line of Duty—and had then made out the application for another vehicle.

  “Uuuuuu! It’s been promoted!” cried the Transport Issue Clerk. “It’s a Grade Eleven now!” He slapped Ske’s wrist, “You naughty boy. You didn’t have to wreck the other to get a new one. You just could have brought it in. What unnecessary paperwork you drivers make!”

  And then he was onto his communications link with the commercial suppliers—Zippety-Zip Manufacturing Outlet—in Commercial City. “Uuuuu, Chalber, dear,” he said musically to whomever was on the other end. “We’ve had a promotion. And it will need a Model 794-86 right away.” He muted the disk and turned to Ske. “They’ve only
one with purple upholstery and green tassels. Will that do?” Apparently Ske thought it would, for the clerk got “Dear Chalber” to rush right over with it himself.

  “Oh, you are so lucky,” said the clerk to Ske. “The Model 794-86 is absolutely adorable! It has the circular seat in back that makes down into a bed.”

  “Hot Saints!” exclaimed Ske, and well he might, for he had to sleep in my vehicle most of the time.

  “Oh, yes,” cooed the clerk. “And it has window blinders and the cutest bar. You and me will just have to take a ride in it,” wink, wink, “won’t we?”

  I decided there were things I didn’t know about Ske.

  Shortly “Dear Chalber” arrived and there was a hurried and furtive interchange between him and the clerk and I saw the golden flash of money changing hands. Aha! So that was why the Apparatus had so many strange vehicle wrecks!

  The clerk gave “Dear Chalber” a kiss and when a following vehicle had flown him off, the clerk turned to Ske and there was a furtive interchange there and I distinctly saw another, smaller golden flash.

  The new airbus was quite elegant: purple light spinners and green landing wheels with a bright red band all around it. Hardly the thing for undercover work! The interior was so clean it was disgusting. I got in wearily.

  “Have some more wrecks, dear,” I heard the happy clerk tell Ske.

  I was wrong about Ske. He was wiping the clerk’s kiss off very vigorously as he eased in under the wheelstick. We took off for my office.

  “I think you owe me something,” I said. I had to repeat it in a louder voice even though the new bus was much quieter.

  “Oh, you mean the money,” said my driver. “That was just one credit he owed me.”

  He protested he would need it for food but he knew how firm I could be. He finally threw it over his head at me. And even though I was quite certain he had had to peel it off a roll of bills, the airbus was diving about in traffic, so I decided to be satisfied. The back windows were down and I hadn’t fastened my belt. The note had almost sailed out! A close one!

  At my office, when I walked in, the two boys Too-Too and Oh Dear instantly, with just one glance at me, fell into each other’s arms and began to cry. The rest of the clerks in the front office left and it wasn’t even lunch hour. It was quite late in the day. Must be early quitting time, I thought.