Beta Sector- Anthology Page 9

  Toresson had swallowed the bait. There was only one ship in the galaxy that could knock back a blip that big at such a distance. It was closing fast, using the raw energy of the warship’s engines for a headlong approach. My ship bucked a bit as the tractor beams locked on at maximum distance. The radio bleeped at me for attention at the same time. I waited as long as I dared, then flipped it on. The voice boomed out.

  ". . . and you are under the guns of a warship! Don't attempt to run, signal, take evasive action, or in any other way . . ."

  "Who are you—and what the devil do you want?" I spluttered into the communications microphone. I had my display camera on so they could see me, but my own screen stayed dark. They weren't sending any picture. In a way it made my act easier; I just played to an unseen audience. They could see the rich cut of my clothes, the luxurious cabin behind me. Of course they couldn't see my hands.

  "It doesn't matter who we are," the radio boomed again. "Just obey orders if you care to live. Stay away from the controls until we have tied on, then do exactly as I say."

  There were two distant clangs as magnetic grapples hit the hull. A moment later the yacht lurched, as she was drawn inside the warship. I let my eyes roll in fear, looking around for a way to escape—and taking a peek at the outside scanners. The yacht was now inside a small hangar, landing legs retracting in proximity to the deck, and it set down with a thud. I pressed the button that sent the torch-wielding Gamma-8 on its way.

  * * * * *

  "Now let me tell you something," I snapped, wiping away the worried billionaire expression. "First I'll repeat your own warning—obey orders if you want to live. I'll show you why—"

  When I threw the big switch, a carefully worked-out sequence took place. First, of course, the hull was magnetized to the deck and the bombs fused. A light blinked as the camera in the cabin turned off, and the one in the generator room came on. I checked the monitor screen to make sure, then started into the spacesuit. It had to be done fast; at the same time, it was necessary to talk naturally. They must still think of me as sitting in the control room.

  "That's the ship's generators you're looking at," I said. "Ninety-eight percent of their output is now feeding into coils that make an electromagnet of this ship's hull. You will find it very hard to separate us. And I would advise you not to try."

  The suit was on, and I kept the running chatter up through the mic in the helmet, relaying to the ship's transmitter. The camera atop the monitor receiver changed.

  "You are now looking at a fusion bomb that is primed and aware of the magnetic field holding our ships together. It will, of course, go off if you try to pry me away."

  I grabbed up the monitor receiver and ran toward the air lock.

  "This is a different bomb now," I said, keeping one eye on the screen and the other on the slowly opening outer door. "This one has receptors on the hull. Attempt to destroy any part of this ship, or even gain entry to it, and this one will detonate."

  I was in the depressurized hangar now, leaping across the compartment in great bounds.

  "What do you want?" These were the first words Toresson had spoken since his first threats.

  "I want to talk to you, arrange a deal. Something that would be profitable for both of us. But let me first show you the rest of the bombs, so you won't get any strange ideas about not cooperating."

  Of course I had to show him the rest of the bombs; there was no getting out of it. The cameras in the yacht were following a planned program. I made light talk about all my massive armament that would carry us both to perdition, while I made my way to the nearest air lock. There was no armor or warning devices at this spot; it had been chosen carefully from the blueprints.

  "Yeah, yeah . . . I take your word for it, you're a flying bomb. So stop with this roving reporter bit and tell me what you have in mind."

  This time I didn't answer him, because I was running and panting like a dog though the corridors of the warship, the microphone turned off. Just ahead, if the blueprints were right, was the door to the control room. Toresson should be there.

  I stepped through, blaster out, and pointed it at the back of his head. A cat-suited Ingrid stood next to him, looking at the screen.

  "The game's over," I said. "Stand up slowly and keep your hands in sight."

  "What do you mean?" he said angrily, looking at the screen in front of him. The girl caught wise first. She spun around and pointed.

  "He's here!"

  They both stared, gaped at me, caught off guard and completely unprepared.

  "You're under arrest, Toresson," I told him. "And your little friend here."

  Ingrid rolled her eyes up and slid slowly to the floor. Real or faked, I didn't care. I kept the gun on Toresson's pudgy form while he picked her up and carried her to an acceleration couch against the wall.

  "What . . . what will happen now?" He quavered the question. His pouchy jaws shook and I swear there were tears in his eyes. Compared to me, he was a rank amateur in the acting department. He stumbled over to a chair, half-dropping into it.

  "Will they do anything to me?" Ingrid asked groggily. Her eyes were open now.

  "I have no idea of what will happen to you," I told her truthfully. "That is up to the courts to decide."

  "But he made me do all those things," she wailed. She was young, dark-skinned and beautiful. The tears did nothing to spoil this, but her wailing was a bit much.

  Toresson dropped his face into his hands and his shoulders shook. I flicked the gun his way and snapped at him.

  "Sit up, Toresson. An automatic alarm was triggered about a minute ago. A Sector Command cruiser squadron is on its way to these coordinates right now. I'm sure they'll be glad to have their hands on the man who destroyed their—"

  "Don't let them take me, please!" Ingrid was on her feet now, her back pressed to the wall. "They'll put me in prison, do things to my mind!" She shrank away as she spoke, stumbling along the wall. I looked back at Toresson, not wanting to have my eyes off him for an instant.

  "You’ll get what you deserve," I told her, “which in your case is more justice than you’ll find at the end of this gun. Consider yourself fortunate for that.” As I glanced her way, a small door popped open and she was gone.

  "Don't try to run," I shouted after her. "It won’t do any good!" But the words were spoken to empty air.

  Toresson made a strangling noise and I looked back to him quickly. He was sitting up now and his face was dry of tears. In fact, he was laughing, not crying.

  "So she caught you, too, Mr. Wise-cop. Poor little Ingrid with the soft eyes." He broke down again, shaking with laughter.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Don't you catch on yet? The story she told you was true—except she twisted it around a bit. The whole plan, building the warship, then stealing it, was hers. She pulled me into it, played me like an accordion. I fell in love with her, hating myself and happy at the same time. Well—I'm glad now it's over. At least I gave her a chance to get away. I owe her that much. Though I thought I would explode when she went into that innocence act!"

  "You're lying," I said hoarsely, and even I didn't believe it.

  "Sorry. That's the way it is. Your brain-boys will pick my skull to pieces and find out the truth anyway. There's no point in lying now."

  "We'll search the ship. She can't hide for long."

  "She won't have to," Toresson said. "There's a fast scout we picked up, stowed in one of the holds. That must be it leaving now." We could feel the vibration distantly through the floor.

  "It’d been better if she’d stayed, my fat friend," I told him. “Sector Command is nothing if not relentless, especially when it comes to avenging their dead. Rest assured their fighters will intercept her. If she puts up a fight or offers any resistance, they’ll destroy her. My only regret is that she didn’t stay long enough for me to convince her of that. You, on the other hand, are going down for murder and piracy.”

  "Maybe," he said, suddenly sl
umped and tired, no longer laughing. "Maybe they will. But I gave her a chance. It is all over for me now, but she knows that I loved her to the end." He bared his teeth in sudden pain. "Not that she will care in the slightest."

  I kept the gun on him and neither of us moved while the Sector Command ships pulled up, sending a small number of Marines over to board the captured warship. I watched as four fighters sprang from the mouth of a destroyer, hot on the trail of Ingrid. The raids against this sector were now over. I couldn't be blamed if the girl had slipped away. If she evaded the Sector Command fighters, that was their fault, not mine.

  I had my victory. Once Sector Command took over, I would quickly get back into my luxury yacht and return to the Metrade Sector. Receiving any kind of commendation from Stanley Alvarez would be a small miracle. The only thing that interested me was my next assignment—one I was sure was going to get me away from Etor Quadrant and into more lucrative parts of Beta Sector.

  The End

  Shipwrecked on Moruta (2359)

  Part I

  The walls were growing closer by the day. How much longer was I going to be in here? On the far bulkhead of the meager compartment was the lone view port afforded me. Memories of how I’d gotten here came flooding back as I stood by the view port, the eternity of stars dissolving into a dense fog bank which rolled about our passenger transport. We were sliding through the thick cloud blanket of the planet Moruta. How near we actually were to the ground I did not know. Nothing but an unbroken white haze spread mistily, everywhere I looked.

  With jarring suddenness, a terrific shudder ran through the length of the Pride of Trinidad, rattling the loose articles on the desk nearby. The computer tablet, into which I’d been composing a letter, crashed violently to the floor. I reeled to the door, which was nearly flung open in my face.

  "Bergmann!"

  Captain Trevino, in the celadon uniform of his employer, steadied himself on the threshold of my room. The captain and I had become intimate friends during the trip from Third Earth. In his eyes I saw concern.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Don't know yet! Come on—get out of there, man! We may have to get to the escape pod!"

  I followed Trevino. The crew, numbering seven, were gathered in the observation chamber. Most of the passengers were there, too.

  The Pride of Trinidad carried twelve passengers to the Raballa Colony on Moruta. Several of the crew worked feverishly at the controls above the instrument board.

  "What's our altitude?" demanded Trevino.

  "Five thousand meters!" was the prompt reply. "Our drop is better than thirty meters per second!"

  Worried wrinkles creased the kindly old face of Captain Trevino. He debated the issue in his mind for only a millisecond.

  "Understood. Into the escape pod—everybody!"

  Herding the passengers ahead of them, Trevino's uniformed crewmen entered a compartment shaped like a long tube which ended in a nose point. When we were buckled into a spiral of seats threading the escape pod, Trevino pulled the release lever. Instantly, the escape pod shot free of the doomed Pride of Trinidad. For a moment we dropped at a swifter pace than the abandoned ship. After that, our speed of descent was significantly decreased.

  Peering at the proximity sensors, Trevino announced that we were well clear of any collision. The Pride of Trinidad was now far below us and dropping fast.

  "There’s no danger now," he assured the passengers. "We'll come down like a feather. Then all we’ll have to do is send out a dispatch to Raballa, and they’ll get a rescue ship out to us."

  Trevino was equal to the situation. Space flight required capable people to cope with interplanetary emergencies. If Trevino brought his crew and passengers safely through this adversity and also salvaged the valuable cargo of the Pride of Trinidad, it was another feather in his cap—not to mention a hefty bonus from his employer, Pan Galactic Transports.

  First Mate Donovan McMillian, second to Trevino in command, labored over the transmitter console. McMillian looked up at his superior officer with an uneasy expression. The captain was quick to sense trouble.

  "What's wrong?"

  "I don't like the looks of this," was McMillian's reply. "The transmitter refuses to function. I can’t do a thing with it."

  Trevino's face bore its own troubled look. He stepped to the side of his subordinate for a hasty inspection of the terminal.

  "The high- and low-band antennas aren’t showing green, either," said McMillian. "Looks to me as though someone has been tampering with this."

  In their spiral of seats, the passengers looked silently and gravely upon the escape pod base where Trevino and his staff were gathered over the apparatus. A dull glow of cloudy light coming in through the transparent ports of the descending escape pod softened and counteracted the glow of the radium lights. An intangible feeling of depression hung in the air.

  "Elevation, 150 meters," announced one of the crew from his position at the navigation seat.

  "Make a landing," ordered Trevino. "We can't be very far from where the Pride of Trinidad fell. If there's enough of the ship left, we may be able to discover the cause of this accident, not to mention get some more supplies."

  Down through the lush vegetation, the escape pod felt its way, dropping slowly. As it sensed its own proximity to the ground, the landing pads extended automatically, and the small craft finally came to rest on a grass-encrusted knoll.

  Trevino exhaled a long-held breath. "How far are we from the ship?" he queried after checking the state of the passengers.

  "About 500 meters south of it, I'd say," Donovan McMillian responded after checking the computer.

  "We'll go outside and get organized. We've got to get that platinum shipment off the Pride of Trinidad and get into communication with our people at Raballa somehow. At last report, the sensors were telling us we were 300 kilometers from there."

  One of the passengers spoke up with a suggestion. "Can't we go the rest of the way in this? You can send back for what's left of the ship. I've an important reason for arriving in Raballa quickly. If—"

  "Not a chance," cut in Trevino, both amused and annoyed. "The escape pod wouldn't take us anywhere. All the pod is good for is an emergency descent. It has no atmospheric maneuvering capabilities." Turning to look at the passenger in question, Trevino was met with the sour expression of an older human male. “Everybody out. That’s an order.”

  * * * * *

  After disembarking, preparations were made for a trip to the wrecked spaceship.

  "Might I go with you and the men, Captain?" I ventured.

  "Sure, Bergmann. I'll have to leave part of the crew here with the passengers and the escape pod, so I'm glad to have a few volunteers."

  "Count on me, then," another of the passengers spoke up.

  I recognized him as Nathaniel Conrad. He was a man about my own age, possibly younger, perhaps in his late twenties. Conrad, like Trevino and I, had become acquaintances during the trip, having spent many hours together. This was my second trip to the vegetation-covered planet, but Conrad had made many trips to Moruta, spending considerable time among the colonies. I’d learned much that interested me about the man.

  Our party consisted of Trevino, Conrad, three of the crew, four other passengers and myself. Well-armed with hand pistols and a few rifles, we set out through the yellow jungle in search of the remains of the Pride of Trinidad. McMillian insisted that it was not far away according to his proximity detector, which was specifically tuned to the bulk and metal composition of the star cruiser.

  Progress was difficult in spots, and we found it necessary to hack our way through lush growths of vegetation, taking numerous detours around interlaced verdure. As such, we were out of sight of the escape pod almost immediately.

  One of the passengers who had volunteered to accompany us complained at the prospect of becoming lost. Trevino calmed the man's anxiety with a brief explanation of the directometer he carried. It was an elaborate perfection of t
he compass. On a square screen, our position was always designated in relation to the Pride of Trinidad. By telescopic condensation of the field, Trevino was capable of bringing Raballa on the instrument. As he’d said earlier, it was well over 300 kilometers beyond us.

  "If McMillian doesn't have that transmitter fixed by the time we get back, we’re going to be in a really tight spot."

  "There's the ship!" Conrad called out as we passed a large, blue-trunked tree.

  We looked where the pointing arm of Conrad designated. The wrecked spaceship lay embedded in the murky waters of a swamp, fully one-third of its bulk out of sight. Above, the torn and tangled mass of vegetation bore witness to the rapid descent of the craft. Mighty branches were torn away from giant trees. The ship itself was enwrapped by interlaced creepers which it had ripped loose from the upper foliage.

  We waded through warm, stagnant water which teemed with marine life. We were halfway to the side of the Pride of Trinidad when a cry from behind startled me into action. I turned and stared into the gaping jaws of a terrifying serpent wriggling through the shallow water on many legs. Several handguns flashed to life almost simultaneously. The loathsome monster, four meters long and covered in scales and horns, turned belly up, floating dead upon the surface of the swamp water.

  From then on, we advanced more cautiously. Coming alongside the crushed hull of the interplanetary liner, we made an inspection of its position. The ship lay nearly right side up, the decks slanting a bit sharply to one side. Upon the outer deck of the Pride of Trinidad, Trevino scratched his head and looked the situation over.

  "Not as bad as I'd feared," was his comment. "Wouldn't be much else but junk here if it hadn't been for the jungle breaking the fall." He pointed upward to the strong barrier of interlaced foliage. "I’d really like to know why she crashed in the first place.”

  "Wasn't there an explosion?" I inquired. "There was a shock just before you opened the door to my stateroom. For a moment I thought we'd struck the planet."