Deathworld

Just as Meta cut the power a glare of white light burst from the screens. They turned black instantly as the hull pickups burned out. She switched filters into place, then pressed the button that rotated new pickups into position.

Far below, in the boiling sea, a climbing cloud of mushroom-shaped flame filled the spot where the island had been seconds before. The three of them looked at it, silently and unmoving. Kerk recovered first.

“Head for home, Meta, and get operations on the screen. Twenty-five men dead, but they did their job. They knocked out those beasts — whatever they were — and ended the war. I can’t think of a better way for a man to die.”

Meta set the orbit, then called operations.

“Trouble getting through,” she said. “I have a robot landing beam response, but no one is answering the call.”

A man appeared on the empty screen. He was beaded with sweat and had a harried look in his eyes. “Kerk,” he said, “is that you? Get the ship back here at once. We need her firepower at the perimeter. All blazes broke loose a minute ago, a general attack from every side, worse than I’ve ever seen.”

“What do you mean?” Kerk stammered in unbelief. “The war is over — we blasted them, destroyed their headquarters completely.”

“The war is going like it never has gone before,” the other snapped back. “I don’t know what you did, but it stirred up the stewpot of hell here. Now stop talking and get the ship back!”

Kerk turned slowly to face Jason, his face pulled back in a look of raw animal savagery.

“You —! You did it! I should have killed you the first time I saw you. I wanted to, now I know I was right. You’ve been like a plague since you came here, sowing death in every direction. I knew you were wrong, yet I let your twisted words convince me. And look what has happened. First you killed Welf. Then you murdered those men in the cave. Now this attack on the perimeter — all who die there, you will have killed!”

Kerk advanced on Jason, step by slow step, hatred twisting his features. Jason backed away until he could retreat no further, his shoulders against the chart case. Kerk’s hand lashed out, not a fighting blow, but an open slap. Though Jason rolled with it, it still battered him and stretched him full length on the floor. His arm was against the chart case, his fingers near the sealed tubes that held the jump matrices.

Jason seized one of the heavy tubes with both hands and pulled it out. He swung it with all his strength into Kerk’s face. It broke the skin on his cheekbone and forehead and blood ran from the cuts. But it didn’t slow or stop the big man in the slightest. His smile held no mercy as he reached down and dragged Jason to his feet.

“Fight back,” he said, “I will have that much more pleasure as I kill you.” He drew back the granite fist that would tear Jason’s head from his shoulders.

“Go ahead,” Jason said, and stopped struggling. “Kill me. You can do it easily. Only don’t call it justice. Welf died to save me. But the men on the island died because of your stupidity. I wanted peace and you wanted war. Now you have it. Kill me to soothe your conscience, because the truth is something you can’t face up to.”

With a bellow of rage Kerk drove the pile-driver fist down.

Meta grabbed the arm in both her hands and hung on, pulling it aside before the blow could land. The three of them fell together, half crushing Jason.

“Don’t do it,” she screamed. “Jason didn’t want those men to go down there. That was your idea. You can’t kill him for that!”

Kerk, exploding with rage, was past hearing. He turned his attention to Meta, tearing her from him. She was a woman and her supple strength was meager compared to his great muscles. But she was a Pyrran woman and she did what no off-worlder could. She slowed him for a moment, stopped the fury of his attack until he could rip her hands loose and throw her aside. It didn’t take him long to do this, but it was just time enough for Jason to get to the door.

Jason stumbled through, and jammed shut the lock behind him. A split second after he had driven the bolt home Kerk’s weight plunged into the door. The metal screamed and bent, giving way. One hinge was torn loose and the other held only by a shred of metal. It would go down on the next blow.

Jason wasn’t waiting for that. He hadn’t stayed to see if the door would stop the raging Pyrran. No door on the ship could stop him. Fast as possible, Jason went down the gangway. There was no safety on the ship, which meant he had to get off it. The lifeboat deck was just ahead.

Ever since first seeing them, he had given a lot of thought to the lifeboats. Though he hadn’t looked ahead to this situation, he knew a time might come when he would need transportation of his own. The lifeboats had seemed to be the best bet, except that Meta had told him they had no fuel. She had been right in one thing — the boat he had been in had empty tanks, he had checked. There were five other boats, though, that he hadn’t examined. He had wondered about the idea of useless lifeboats and come to what he hoped was a correct conclusion.

This spaceship was the only one the Pyrrans had. Meta had told him once that they always had pla

With this kind of thinking, there was no need to keep the lifeboats fueled. Not all of them, at least. Though it stood to reason at least one of them held fuel for short flights that would have been wasteful for the parent ship. At this point Jason’s chain of logic grew weak. Too many “ifs.” Ifthey used the lifeboats at all, one of them should be fueled. Ifthey did, it would be fueled now. And ifit were fueled — which one of the six would it be? Jason had no time to go looking. He had to be right the first time.

His reasoning had supplied him with an answer, the last of a long line of suppositions. If a boat were fueled, it should be the one nearest to the control cabin. The one he was diving towards now. His life depended on this string of guesses.

Behind him the door went down with a crash. Kerk bellowed and leaped. Jason hurled himself through the lifeboat port with the nearest thing to a run he could manage under the doubled gravity. With both hands he grabbed the emergency launching handle and pulled down.

An alarm bell rang and the port slammed shut, literally in Kerk’s face. Only his Pyrran reflexes saved him from being smashed by it.

Solid-fuel launchers exploded and blasted the lifeboat clear of the parent ship. Their brief acceleration slammed Jason to the deck, then he floated as the boat went into free fall. The main drive rockets didn’t fire.

In that moment Jason learned what it was like to know he was dead. Without fuel the boat would drop into the jungle below, falling like a rock and blasting apart when it hit. There was no way out.

Then the rockets caught, roared, and he dropped to the deck, bruising his nose. He sat up, rubbing it and gri

The altimeter had fed information to the autopilot, leveling the boat off parallel to the ground. Like all lifeboat controls these were childishly simple, designed to be used by novices in an emergency. The autopilot could not be shut off, it rode along with the manual controls, tempering foolish piloting. Jason hauled the control wheel into a tight turn and the autopilot gentled it to a soft curve.