Chapter Four

Inside the wide rotunda of the Port Authority Building, Henry walked Bartholomew to the processing line. A familiar scarred face frowned up at him from behind a desk, glanced at Bartholomew.

"Hi, Degüello. What happened to Junior?"

"He had a fall," Henry said. "He'll be O.K." The scarred man leaned forward, sniffed. He cocked an eye at Henry.

"The pink stuff, hey? He spill his guts?"

"They overdid it. He slept through the proceedings."

"Some smart guys outsmart themselves." The scarred man stamped papers, waved toward the far side of the hall.

"You cut it close, bud. You got about thirty minutes before the red rocket goes up. You played it smart, getting the extra crewman. He went aboard the car half an hour back."

Henry looked at him. "Was he alone?"

"You ain't expecting to get a whole platoon into that Bolo Minor, I hope. You'll be squeezed with three."

"Yeah. Thanks for everything."

"Good luck, bud—I'd still ditch dreaming-boy, if I was you."

"I can't. He owns the outfit."

* * *

Henry pushed through the turnstile, walked Bartholomew across toward the high glass wall, with the sweep of flood-lit ramp beyond where the massive armored ground vehicle unloaded from Degüello squatted, dwarfed by the looming silhouettes of converted freighters, ancient destroyer escorts, battered short-run liners. Bartholomew staggered, breathing noisily.

"How's your head now, Bart?" Henry asked.

"Ghastly. My legs—like lead. I don't remember—"

"Forget it. Try to stay on your feet long enough to get aboard. Then you can go to sleep."

"I guess I made a fool of myself . . ."

"You had lots of help."

* * *

Faint gray tinged the eastern sky now. A power unit started up, stuttering. An odor of ozone and exhaust gases floated across from the ships. Men hurried to and fro, throwing triple shadows across the tarmac. The dawn air was tense with expectancy.

A line cart puttered into view, rounding the flank of a space-pitted vessel. Henry hailed it; it slowed in a descending whine of worn turbos.

"I need a Decon; how about it?"

A tired-faced man in a white coverall stared at him from the cart.

"You birds; you drink all night, and all of a sudden you remember you got no clearance papers. If it was left up to me, I'd say to hell with you—"

"Sure." Henry handed him a ten-credit chip. "Sorry to bother you. I've had a couple of things on my mind."

He pointed toward the Bolo, parked a hundred feet away.

"O.K.; seein' it's just a car, I guess I got time . . ." The driver maneuvered his cart into position, attached hoses. Henry lowered Bartholomew to the ground, went to the panel set in the flank of the heavy machine. There were tool marks around it; it opened at a touch. Fragments of the broken lock lay inside. The button marked PORT—UNLOCK was depressed. Henry pressed the LOCK button, heard the snick of the mechanism above. The Decon man started up the blower. Its hum built up to a sharp whine. Minutes passed. Bartholomew had stretched on his back, snoring. Henry lifted him to his feet, walked him until he could stand alone. The driver shut down the blower, disconnected the hoses, reeled them in. He revved up his turbos, wheeled off.

Henry helped Bartholomew to the car.

"Going to be ill . . ." the younger man said.

"Let's get aboard; then you can tell me all about it." Henry cycled the hatch open; the two men climbed inside. A faint odor of Cyanon still hung in the air. Bartholomew gagged.

"Why. . .another Decon. . . ? We did that. . .before. . ." He broke off, staring at the body of a man, lying head-down in the short companionway. The eyes of the inverted face were open; the mouth gaped, showing a thick tongue. The thin features were a leaden purple.

"G-good Lord . . . !" Bartholomew groped for support. "There was . . . man inside . . . when—"

"Yeah; let's get moving."

Henry hauled his sagging shipmate past the corpse, settled him in his cradle, buckled him in. He flipped the count-down switch, set the clock.

"You knew . . . that man . . . was aboard," Bartholomew gasped out.

"Go to sleep, Larry," Henry said. He strapped himself into his gimbaled seat before the Bolo's panel, punched buttons. A ready-light glowed on the panel. The count-down clock ticked loudly.

"Attention!" the ground-control screen said. "Zero minus two minutes . . ." There was a sudden loud snore from Bartholomew.

Henry started the engine, glanced over instruments, flipped on the specially installed wide-vision screens.

"Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . ." the screen said. Henry slipped the clutches, revved the mighty Bolo engines.

" . . . three . . . two . . . one . . ." The Bolo moved out of the shadow of Degüello.

"It's all yours," the speaker said. "Go and get it!"

* * *

They were ten miles into the rough country east of the port, slamming ahead, over and through obstructions like a charging bull-devil. On the screens, the clustered blips of other vehicles had fanned out now, spreading to all points of the compass from the starting point. The port IRAD showed a massive vehicle—a ten-tonner—pacing the Bolo at one mile. To the right, two smaller vehicles raced, on courses converging from two miles. Henry's glance went over the fire-control panel. Green GO lights glowed cheerfully at him. He smiled to himself, added another five hundred meters per minute to his speed. It was time to thin out the opposition. Beside him, Larry slept, strapped in his padded couch.

* * *

At twenty miles out, the ten-tonner—a Gendye Supreme, Henry guessed—still held position at half a mile, matching his speed. The two smaller shadowers had fallen back, were mere bright specks on the screen astern. Henry flicked a switch; a pink light winked on the panel—the BATTERY ARMED telltale from a salvaged destroyer. He boosted his speed another half kilometer per minute. The Bolo bucked, slamming through tangled desert scrub.

* * *

Forty-six minutes and forty miles from Pango-Ri, Henry adjusted course to the south, punched a random evasive pattern into the course-control monitor. The couch rocked under him as the Bolo curveted in a spiral reverse. The escorting vehicle tracked him, holding interval. Henry whistled. The boy was good—and riding good iron.

Abruptly the alarm bell clanged. Henry read dials. A forty-kilo mass, closing at a thousand feet per second; a light missile. He keyed the intercept-response circuit, felt the Bolo buck as his missiles launched. Lights flashed as new missiles slid into position in the magazines. On the screen, the two tiny rockets curved out, minute flecks of yellow-white against the blackness, converging on the attacking missile. The screens dimmed to near-opacity as the incoming weapon detonated in a blaze of hard radiation.

Bartholomew stirred, opened his eyes. "What's . . . going on?" he managed.

"Some lawless character just took a shot at us," Henry said tightly. "Go back to sleep."

"A shot—?" Bartholomew was wide awake now. "Did you report it?"

"Too busy—"

"But that's illegal! Can't we do something—?"

"Sure; we can fire back with our own illegal battery."

"Captain, my father—"

"Shut up! I'm busy . . . !"

Ten minutes passed while the two war-cars raced northward side by side, their courses steadily converging.

"A little closer," Henry muttered. "Just come in a little closer, baby . . ."

"What are you doing?" Larry demanded.

"I'm letting him get his head well into the noose," Henry said. "If I close with him, he might spook—but since he's playing the heavy . . ."

"Perhaps he just wants to—to negotiate!" Larry said.

"We'll fool him by opening the conversation first," Henry said, and thumbed the FIRE button. A flickering glare sprang up around the Bolo. The screens flickered uncertainly as excited ions struck in uneven waves. The speeding Supreme veered away, suddenly wary too late. As it turned, its image flicked into incandescence. The screen went from white to yellow to red, faded to show long streamers trailing out to all sides in a blaze of hard radiation. Dark pinpoints of solid wreckage fanned out; a vast smoke ring shot through with bright flashes formed, grew.

The ground-control screen crackled.

"Degüello—what's going on out there? A while ago, I read two blasts near you—just now I picked up a two K-T flash less'n a mile abeam of you. Plenty of the hard stuff, too! It'll be raining hot iron around here for a week!

Are you in trouble?"

"Degüello to tower," Henry grated against the slam of the speeding machine. "No, I'm having myself a time. I guess some of the boys are sloppy drivers . . ."

"If I didn't know a Minor didn't pack an armory, I might get an idea you carted some contraband in here, Degüello! You wouldn't pull one like that, would you?"

"Goodness, that would be illegal, tower."

"It would at that. Maybe you better call a misdeal, Degüello . . ."

"I hate lawsuits, tower. I'll take my chance."

"It's your play. But watch somebody moving in at two-seven-oh. Tower over and out."

A bell clanged. The IRAD showed a small car emerging from the dust cloud that was all that remained of the heavy Gendye. It swung toward the Bolo.

"Looks like he carried a spare," Henry muttered; he waited, frowning, his finger poised over the firing key. The car flashed past a hundred yards distant, close enough for Henry to read ISV MANTA-II lettered on the side. At the last instant, a bright flash winked from it. Henry's finger went down on the key. The Bolo lurched. The vision screens blacked. Henry fought the controls while Bartholomew clung to his cradle, his eyes and mouth wide.

"Tricky," Henry grated. "A gyrob—a remote job. But I think we outgunned them."

"Who are they?" Bartholomew demanded. "What does it mean?" Henry was studying the terrain map. A long peninsula stretched north from Pango-Ri, curving to the horizon and beyond—fifteen hundred miles of mountain, desert, and ice.

"It means we're in the clear for the moment," he said. "We're IRAD-negative, so maybe we've lost them for good—if we can stay ahead of them. But hold on to your hat, Larry, the next few days are going to be a little hectic."

* * *

Three days and nights had passed, Henry and Larry alternating at the controls as they raced northward. Now massive ice crags loomed on the forward direct view panel; a wilderness of broken ice was visible beyond. Strangling voices were coming from the Bolo's power compartment. Henry wrestled the wheel, attempting to brake the speeding machine to a halt.

"We can't stop here," Bartholomew yelled above the tumult. "Nothing but ice and broken rock . . . !"

"Left track's locking!" Henry shouted. "We'll settle for what we can get!" Low, scrub-like trees hurtled past the Bolo. There was a rending crash, a shock, and the car skidded wildly. The emergency retrorockets fired a brief burst; then the car was careening sideways, throwing a spray of pulverized ice a hundred feet in the air. It shot over the crest of a rise, dropped into deep snow, plowed on another hundred yards, and came to rest with a final bone-jarring impact in a jumble of fallen rock and ice.

Bartholomew fumbled his way from his couch, bleeding from a cut on the side of his head. Choking, black smoke still wafted from the panel. Bartholomew coughed, groped his way to the view screen.

"Where are we?" he gasped, staring out at the bleak, white wilderness visible beyond the prow, half-buried in snow.

"About twelve hundred miles north of Pango-Ri, I'd estimate." Henry tossed a smashed ration box aside, got to his feet, cradling his left hand. There was blood on the tight black glove. "And lucky to be talking about it. That last shot must have gotten to us."

"You've hurt your hand," Bartholomew said. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his face was greenish pale.

"I'm all right." Henry looked him over. "How do you feel?"

"I ache all over," Bartholomew said. "And my mouth is cut . . ." He explored the raw marks on his lip with his tongue.

Henry scattered gear aside, examining the panel. "Let's see how bad off we are—"

He broke off as his eye fell on an instrument on the still-smoldering panel. He swore with feeling.

"What is it?"

"Right on our tail—so much for forty thousand credits' worth of radar-negative gear. A heavy job—a fifteen-tonner, anyway—about fifty miles out."

"You mean there's a vehicle nearby?" Bartholomew babbled. "Thank heaven!

Signal them! Try the communicator—!"

"Calm down, Bart. Could be it's a far-out coincidence; wouldn't bet my second-best brass cufflinks on it."

"But, Captain—it's an incredible stroke of luck—"

"The worst luck you could have would be for that car to pay us a call. We've got to get clear of here—fast. Come on; get your pack ready!"

"Leave the car? But this is our only shelter!" Henry ignored him, shoving food into his pack, checking the charge in his power gun.

"We don't need shelter, Larry," he said. "We need distance between us and them."

"But they're our only hope of getting help!"

"Don't bitch about a little thing like a twelve-hundred-mile hike back to port. We have more immediate worries. Get the first-aid kit!" Henry picked up the folding marker frame and the plastic carton containing the four official markers that had been issued to them at Pango-Ri, then cycled the hatch open, looked out at blowing snow. Icy air cut at him like a saw.

"Captain . . ." Bartholomew stood beside him, shivering in the arctic wind.

"You actually think they might attack us?"

"Uh-huh."

"But—they can't do this! There must be a law—!"

"Sure; the Survival of the Fittest, they call it. It may not be democratic, but it still works."

"It's madness!" Larry shivered. "This violence, lawlessness. Those are civilized men—"

"Not these boys; they intend to kill us. I don't plan to let 'em, if I can help it." Henry jumped down into the soft snow.

Bartholomew followed, then looked back at the warm cabin.

"But to leave this—to go out into a blizzard—how do we know we can even survive?"

"We don't," Henry said. "That's what makes it fun."

* * *

An hour later, Henry and Larry came down off the broken rock-slopes to a gravel-spit at the edge of a frozen river.

Larry dumped his fifty-pound pack with a groan of relief.

"Troubles?" demanded Henry, sardonically.

Larry looked over at him.

"My feet hurt," he answered. He looked at his hands. "I've already worn blisters on my palms from trying to lift the straps free of my shoulders." He stared at Henry. "How about you?"

"All right. You'll be all right, too. It's a matter of getting used to the idea a little discomfort won't kill you."

Larry bit his lower lip.

"You're in command," he said. "But it's only fair to warn you I'm not convinced of the need for abandoning the car and all the expensive equipment in it. It'll be my duty to report that fact to my father, as backer, when we return."

"Don't bother; he wouldn't appreciate the humor of it." Henry broke off, looking back in the direction from which they had come. A low rumble sounded; a flickering light winked against the lead-colored sky.

"Oh-oh; company's here." He got to his feet. "I hope this dissipates any last, lingering doubts you may have had that we're the object of someone's attentions," Henry said.

"But—if they're really after us—why aren't they following our trail? We've only come two or three miles."

"Maybe they're a little extracautious. I did what I could to discourage 'em back at Pango-Ri."

"What did happen there? Was there . . . violence?" Larry trailed as Henry headed upslope against a driving wind.

"I guess you could call it that."

"Was anyone . . . injured?"

"Well, you got a split lip."

"I mean, seriously?"

"I don't think so. I left a couple of lads in an alley, nursing headaches, and Heavy Joe has a piece of Pore Scandy's wire in his arm, but they'll recover."

"Well, then, why are you so sure—"

"Of course, I killed four of them," Henry added. Bartholomew stopped dead. "You k-k-killed four m-men?"

"Remember the chap we found when we came aboard? He got an overdose of rat poison—"

"I-I seem to remember—something—a face, upside down . . ."

"That's the guy. You were coming out of the gas by then."

"But—you'll be tried for murder—"

Henry started off. "Who by?"

Bartholomew trailed him, still struggling into his pack harness. "By the planetary law-enforcement agencies . . ."

"Not here; there's no law, no cops, no murder trials."

"Then the Quarantine Service—"

"They're busy managing the Run. They don't bother much with unsuccessful entrants."

"But when we return to civilization—"

"We're outside the jurisdiction of Aldorado. The only law here is what you make up as you go along. Heavy Joe sent his boys up against me, and I outgunned 'em. It could have been the other way around."

"But—how could you do it, Captain—kill a man, a fellow human?"

"Before you see home again you may know the answer to that one." They tramped on in silence for an hour; the probing wind bit at the exposed skin of their faces and wrists; dry snow particles stung like flying sand.

"What will we do when night falls?" Bartholomew called suddenly. "The temperature is well below freezing now; it will drop even lower—" A bright flash glared briefly against the snow, throwing long shadows for an instant ahead of the men. Underfoot, the ground quivered. A dull boom!

sounded, rolled, faded.

"There went the Bolo," Henry said. He stood, staring back along the trail. Across the icy rock, a few footprints showed, filling rapidly with brown snow. "She deserved better than that."

"They blew up our car?" Bartholomew's face was haggard in the fading light.

"Still think it's a detachment of the Travelers' Aid?" Bartholomew stared around at the broken landscape of gray rock, white ice.

"What if they follow us—attack us here . . . ?"

"We're dead meat if they follow up close. My idea is to reach the hills; maybe we'll find a spot to hole up."

"What then? Our suit power packs won't last forever; we'll freeze—even if they don't kill us . . ."

"We're not dead yet. Let's stay alive and wait for the opposition to make a mistake."

* * *

"Listen," Larry cupped an ear. "Isn't that the sound of engines?"

"Could be. I guess the boys plan to make sure of us."

"How—how many of them—" panted Larry, leaning against the slope and the wind, "did you say you killed?"

Henry smiled grimly. "You like the revenge motive, eh?" He shook his head.

"It doesn't figure; they're spending a lot of money chasing us; sentiment isn't in it."

"Captain—do you notice anything . . . ?" Larry stopped, stood with his head up, sniffing the air. "I detect—a sort of fresh, green odor—very faint . . ." He nodded forward, toward the next line of hills. "From up ahead there . . ."

"That so?" said Henry. He turned to look oddly at the younger man. "Well, the unexpected always demands an explanation. Let's shove ahead and take a look."

Ten minutes later they topped a rise to look down across a sheltered valley that stretched to a distant, hazy line of high white hills. A dark clump of foliage showed starkly a quarter of a mile distant.

"Good Lord, Captain," Bartholomew stared at the scene. "Those are trees down there . . ."

"That's right. We'll have cover—and they'll stand out like flies on a wedding cake in all this nice smooth snow."

They tramped down across the snowy field. Ahead, the clump of trees loomed up, tapered, pale-barked tree ferns, fifty feet high. The two men circled cautiously, then came close. A breath of warm air seemed to flow upward from the shadowed grove. They went in under the trees. A gentle breeze stirred the feathery leaves on low-hanging branches.

"Captain—this is grass underfoot! And that wind! It's warm! It's coming from there . . ." Bartholomew went toward the mound at the center of the copse, almost buried under creeping vines. Henry stood watching the younger man. Larry stopped, came up with a tiny, pale yellow flower of intricate shape.

"It's incredible! This oasis—"

He broke off. There was a sudden motion; a tiny winged creature whirred from the dark mound, darted past Bartholomew's head as he ducked. It fluttered on, then fell to the snow at the outer edge of the ring of trees. It lay, beating gossamer wings, then fell still.

"Captain!" Larry looked from the vine-grown mound. "There's a light shining from here . . ." Henry came up beside him. Through the blanketing tangle of fluttering leaves, a greenish glow filtered from below.

"There's sort of a crack down there—a slot in the face of the mound!" said Larry, excitedly. "The air is coming from there!" Henry shoved past him, pulled aside finger-thick creepers, revealing a smooth, rock-like surface. It was geometrically flat, dull grayish-black in color, with a five-foot-wide, three-inch-high opening.

"Why, it's man-made," Larry said. Henry nodded. He had drawn his gun, almost absently. There was no sound but the steady sigh of air flowing from the opening.

"It looks old," Bartholomew whispered. "But the light . . . Do you suppose .

. . ?"

"Nobody home—for a long time now." Henry holstered the gun, worked his way behind the screen of vegetation; his feet sank into a soft mulch of decayed vegetation. "Let's get this stuff cleared away and take a look inside."

* * *

Half an hour later, Henry's knife sawed through the last of the interwoven network of twisted vines; a mass of heavy foliage fell away from the opening. A warm draft gushed out, blowing fallen leaves, whipping at dangling tendrils of greenery. Henry looked down into a rectangular chamber fifteen feet on a side, bare, unadorned, its floor drifted deep with blown dust and dead leaves, dotted over with tiny green plants and the white knobs of fungus. At the far side, a slab door stood ajar; soft green light came from beyond it.

"If we pull a little more of this debris away, we can climb down in there," Henry said. "Then if we can douse the light, we'll have a first-class defensive position."

"Is that wise, Captain?" The green light cast shadows on Bartholomew's face. "It may be some sort of trap."

Henry shook his head. His eyes glittered in the eerie light. "The boys are tricky, all right; they trailed us a hundred miles off the beaten track. But I'm pretty sure they didn't rush ahead and set up a booby trap at the end of the line. Nobody's that good."

He dug into the loose-packed rubbish, cleared a trough, then turned and lowered himself down the sloping heap to the floor of the buried room. The light glowed from an open doorway. Beyond it was another room, much like the first, but longer, bright-lit by the glare from still another door. In the middle of the floor lay a pattern of small objects like scattered sticks. Bartholomew dropped down, came up behind Henry.

"What do you suppose it is?"

Henry stooped, picked up a curiously shaped object of reddish metal. A shred of grayish fabric clung to it. He stirred the stick-like remains with his finger.

"It's a skeleton," he said.

"A skeleton? Of what?"

"Something that wore clothes."

"Clothes . . . ? But those don't look like anything human . . ."

"Who said it was human?" Henry's voice was rough; it tore at his throat. He turned toward the bright doorway, twenty feet away at the end of the long chamber. A haze like hot air rising from a blast pad shimmered in the rectangular archway. Beyond stretched a view of rolling green hills, dotted with groves of thin-stemmed trees with celery-like tops. Far away, wooded mountains reared up under a sky as deep and clear as green glass.

"What . . ." Larry's voice stumbled. "What is it? How . . ." But Henry scarcely heard him. He was already walking toward the mirage-like scene. A steady flow of warm air pushed into his face, bringing an odor of spring.

There was a moment of pressure as he passed through the door, like the surface of a pond breaking; and he was standing among nodding wild flowers. He filled his lungs with the warm air; like a man who has at last come home, and something that had been locked inside him for so long that he had all but forgotten it was there, released.

Then he came back to the present. He made himself turn and step back into the chamber. Larry was staring at him.

"Good Lord!" said the young man, softly. His face was pale. "What is it, Captain? What does it mean? Why didn't you toss something through there before you tried stepping through yourself? Anything could have happened to you, when you stepped through that—that hole in the world."

"Let's get back topside and camouflage the opening," Henry said brusquely.

"Then we'll come back down and you can take a look for yourself."

* * *

The distant mutter of turbos rose and fell. "They're coming up fast," Henry said. "We left a pretty good trail that last half mile or so. When they hit that, they'll be here in minutes."

"We've done all we can," Larry panted. "After we slide down, I'll pull the mat in place. Then if we close the inner door to shut the light away—"

"Yes," Henry said. His mind was only half on the defensive preparations they were making. He added, absently, " . . . and if they find us, they'll still have to come through the door one at a time . . ."

The two men re-entered the chamber, settled the mass of bundled vines firmly in the opening. Inside the inner room, they pushed the heavy door to. It sealed smoothly. Henry turned to the entrance.

"—That skeleton, Captain," said Larry following him. "It must be from some non-human creature—but on all the worlds we've found yet, there was nothing higher than the insect level—"

"Martian pyramids," said Henry, briefly.

"But those were natural formations—"

"Maybe." Henry was almost to the entrance. "And on the other hand, maybe whoever built this visited a few other places, too." Larry caught at his arm, stopping him.

"Captain! You aren't just going to walk through that doorway again without checking—" Henry shook off the younger man's grasp.

"Stay behind if you want to," he growled, and walked toward the light, toward sunshine and flowers and grass. A tingling sensation washed over his face as he went through and then the feel of yielding sod under his feet. The warm, moist odor of clean earth rose up around him. Behind him he heard the last half of a spoken word.

"—air!"

He turned; beyond the delicately carved stone of the doorframe, Larry stood in the shadows, staring at him.

"Come on along, Larry," Henry said. "We've got some claim markers to plant."

"Captain . . ." Larry was staring at him strangely. "I have the impression you know this place; that you've been here before."

"Do you?" Henry said, and turned and started away across the springy turf.