Chapter IV

Ellen called and called. Her voice grew weary and her shoulders dropped hopelessly as hours passed without reply.

Borden found where Sattell had crossed the wires so that if the ship took off and went out into space, the control board would show all air vents as safely sealed. But there would remain a small, steady drain of leakage of the ship's air stores.

He also found a small alteration of the water-recovery system. They would have run out of water on the way home. He found a cunning circuit arranged so that if the ship rose on interplanetary drive and set out on even a hopeless search for home, the instant it went into overdrive its power tanks would fuse and short, and it would be left driveless and powerless, to crash or drift helplessly until its occupants died or went mad of despair.

Borden came back to the control room with his face set in savage lines.

"We didn't watch him," he said bitterly, "so he took advantage. Right now he's gloating, sure we have to accept any terms he demands, for the use of the log and maps to get home. And he's gloating because he'll have his revenge if we refuse, and if we do make a bargain he'll tell us how many ways we'd have died if we had not made it. We've got to check every device and every piece of equipment in the ship before we can lift off this planet--even after we've got fuel!"

He looked out a port. The shadows were long and slanting. It was twilight. Night was near.

Ellen said drearily into the talkie:

"Jerry, Sattell has vanished. Please come in!... Jerry, Sattell has vanished. Please come in!"

Far away, a tiny figure appeared in the half light. It came hastening toward the _Danaë_. It was one of the furry bipeds, probably one of those that had accompanied Jerry. It came through the dusk at an agitated lope, using its long, furry arms to balance itself. It made an agitated leap at sight of the space-ship and rushed onward more frantically than before.

"Look!" cried Borden. "That looks like a messenger!"

He went out the air-lock door, his hand on the weapon in his holster.

The biped bounced at sight of him. Its fur flattened, but it came on at a tearing rush. It leaped and slid and came to rest before him, its trunk waving wildly. He bent to scratch it, according to the custom that had become established in the past four days. But it did not wait. It stood up, making excited chirping noises and gesturing wildly. It made grimaces, in the falling night.

Then Borden noticed blood on its fur....

* * * * *

An hour later an almost unbearable bright light appeared in the distance, moving toward the _Danaë_. Jerry had carried a handflash, of course, but nothing equal to this. Judging by the wavering of the light, it was mounted on a vehicle of some sort.

Ellen's voice said wearily for the thousandth time:

"Jerry, Sattell's vanished. Come in, please."

"You can stop that, Ellen," Borden told her. "The call's answered. It looks as if the real natives of this planet are coming to call."

He shrugged and turned to the furry creature which now was inside the ship. He'd bandaged its wound--a clean deep puncture in the flesh of its arm. He led it to the air-lock.

"Get going," he said curtly. "Your masters are coming. They won't like it that you've made friends with us. Scat!"

But the creature only blinked at the approaching light while its fur flattened. It went bouncing out and toward the swaying, lurching approaching light, racing joyfully to meet it.

Borden stared. Then he saw that other figures were about the approaching light beam--other furry, dancing, leaping creatures. They ran and gesticulated happily about the advancing vehicle.

It didn't make sense. But nothing did make sense on this planet!

Borden waited in the air-lock with Ellen behind him and a blaster in his hand. In the darkness the vehicle came lurching onward with surprising quiet. Its light swayed, and it had moved as if to turn, when Borden threw on the outside lights.

A semicircle of the sparse green vegetation sprang into brilliance. Borden and his wife were relatively in shadow. They could see the vehicle clearly.

It was nearly thirty feet long and rolled on two curious devices which were not caterpillar treads, but not exactly wheels, either. A loping, wildly excited horde of bipeds--including the one Borden had bandaged--surrounded it, making way for it but escorting it in wild enthusiasm.

The thing was caked with dirt. It was not merely dusty. It was packed with dried clay, as if it had been buried and only recently exhumed. A round blister at the front which might be plastic had been partly cleared of dirt, but there were still areas in which clay clung and made it opaque.

It curved about and swung parallel to the ship. It stopped within twenty feet of the air-lock. Then an oval window--which looked as if somebody had scratched caked clay off it with a stick--turned endwise, quite impossibly, and became a door. The door slid aside. The interior of the vehicle was dark.

Borden held his blaster ready. He wouldn't shoot first, but there _had_ been a heat-ray flung at the _Danaë_!...

* * * * *

And Jerry got out of the incredible vehicle and stood blinking embarrassedly in the light from the outer-lock glare lamps.

Borden snapped, "Who's with you?"

"Why, nobody," said Jerry. "I tried to tell you by talkie, but it wouldn't work. I'm afraid Sattell did something to it before I left. It's dead."

"What's that thing?" demanded Borden. "That--that wagon?"

"It's a ground car, sir," Jerry said uncomfortably. "There are thirty or forty of them in a sort of valley about ten miles away. This one was half-buried in mud, and the others are the same or worse. The--er--creatures--took me there and dug this out for me. They apparently wanted us to have it."

"And it runs!" said Borden. There was again no sense to anything. A ground car buried in mud should not run when excavated.

"Yes, sir," said Jerry. "They dug it out for me, and I got in it and found the skeletons and the weapons."

Ellen said, "Skeletons?"

Borden said, "Weapons!"

"Yes, sir. I tried to ask you for advice over the talkie, and like I said, it wouldn't work, so I fiddled around a bit and the car showed signs of life, and I found out how to run it. So I brought it back. The weapons work too, sir. You point them at something and push a knob and they--well, they're pretty deadly."

Borden said flatly, "Sattell's ducked out. With the log and star maps and food. One of the creatures just came in wounded. I thought Sattell had planned to ambush you and get your blaster. If he did trail you--"

Jerry blinked, "I didn't see a sign of him. Just a moment, sir."

He turned to his furry companions. Flushing a little, he pulled something out of his pocket and hung it onto his chin. It was a sock--one of his socks--partly filled with clay.

Borden was still unable to find any two things happening on this planet which added together to make sense. The sight of Jerry fastening a clay-filled sock to his chin seemed slightly more insane than anything else that had happened.

"I've found out how they talk, sir," Jerry said shyly. "It's a sort of sign language with their hands and trunk, and they make noises for inflections and tenses, sir. And emotional overtones. I'm not too good yet, but--"

The scene before the lock door was unique. The clay-caked, thirty-foot vehicle looked more like a land yacht than a ground car. It was made of a golden metal. Two dozen or more of the furry bipeds were regarding Jerry as he made gestures and every so often stopped to adjust the position of his artificial trunk. When he made sounds at them, their fur flattened. When he adjusted his sock trunk, although it far from resembled their own, they seemed entranced. When he finished, the creature with the bandaged arm made elaborate gesticulations accompanied by chirping sounds. Even Borden, now that he had the key, gathered a dim idea of what the biped was trying to say.

"He says, sir," reported Jerry, sweating, "that a stick came through the air and stuck in his arm. He pulled it out and ran away. He kept on running. Then he saw this ship, ran to it, and you bandaged his arm for him."

Borden snapped, "An arrow! Sattell's made a bow and arrow. He sabotaged your talkie so you couldn't be warned about him, and he probably hoped to trail you and kill you with an arrow, so he could take your blaster and come back and kill us! Maybe he was just practicing when he hit this poor creature. Anyhow, he seems to be trying everything all at once, to destroy us." He added sharply, "But weapons! Jerry, from what you say there'll be more weapons in those other wagons! If he finds them, and he probably will, since he was trailing you--"

Jerry said, "I worried about that, sir. So I got the creatures to dig down to the doors of all the wagons in sight. I thought we'd better have the weapons safe before--er--Sattell tried to help us find out about the vehicles. I've got all the weapons right here. But there weren't weapons in all the wagons. In most of them there were just skeletons."

Borden was again reminded of the great number of things which did not fit together into any coherent picture. He said impatiently:

"Then Sattell won't get the weapons. But what's this you keep on saying about skeletons? Did you bring any of them?"

Jerry said, "I left those in here undisturbed. If you'll take the weapons as I hand them out, you can look them over. They're just as I first saw them."

He reached inside the vehicle, passed out objects midway between rifles and blasters in size. They were surprisingly light. They could have been aluminum, except that they were the color of gold or copper. There were three armsful of them.

Ellen took them inside and came back.

"Now I'll look at those skeletons," said Borden.

He took Jerry's hand flash and climbed inside. Jerry said apologetically to Ellen:

"I got so excited about what I found that I forgot all about eating. Do you think I could fix something?"

"I'll do it for you, Jerry," said Ellen.