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  STAR RANGERS by Andre Norton

  PROLOGUE

  There is an old legend concerning a Roman Emperor, who, to show his power, singled out the Tribune of a loyal legion and commanded that he march his men across Asia to the end of the world. And so a thousand men vanished into the hinterland of the largest continent, to be swallowed up forever. On some unknown battlefield the last handful of survivors must have formed a square which was overwhelmed by a barbarian charge. And their eagle may have stood lonely and tarnished in a horsehide tent for a generation thereafter. But it may be guessed, by those who know of the pride of these men in their corps and tradition, that they did march east as long as one still remained on his feet.

  In 8054 A.D. history repeated itself-as it always does. The First Galactic Empire was breaking up.

  Dictators, Emperors, Consolidators wrested the rulership of their own or kindred solar systems from

  Central Control. Space pirates raised flags and recruited fleets to gorge on spoil plundered from this wreckage. It was a time in which only the ruthless could flourish.

  Here and there a man, or a group of men, tried vainly to dam the flood of disaster and disunion. And, notable among these last-ditch fighters who refused to throw aside their belief in the impartial rule of

  Central Control were the remnants of the Stellar Patrol, a law enforcement body whose authority had existed unchallenged for almost a thousand years. Perhaps it was because there was no longer any security to be found outside their own ranks that these men clung the closer to what seemed in the new age to be an outworn code of ethics and morals. And their stubborn loyalty to a vanished ideal was both exasperating and pitiful to the new rulers.

  Jorcam Dester, the last Control Agent of Perun, who was nursing certain ambitions of his own, solved in the Roman manner the problem of ridding his sector of the Patrol. He summoned the half dozen officers still commanding navigable ships and ordered them-under the seal of the Control-out into space, to locate (as he said) and re-map forgotten galactic border systems no one had visited in at least four generations. He offered a vague promise to establish new bases from which the Patrol might rise again, invigorated and revived, to fight for the Control ideals. And, faithful to their very ancient trust, they launched this mission, undermanned, poorly supplied, without real hope, but determined to carry out orders to the last.

  One of these ships was the Scout-Starfire.

  1 - LAST PORT

  The Patrol ship Starfire came into her last port at early morning. She made a bad landing, for two of her eroded tubes blew just as the pilot tried to set her down. She had bounced then, bounced and buckled, and now she lay on her meteor-scarred side.

  Ranger Sergeant Kartr nursed his left wrist in his right hand and licked blood from bitten lips. The port wall of the pilot's cubby had become the floor and the latch of its door dug into one of his shaking knees.

  Of his companions, Latimir had not survived the landing. One glance at the crazy twisted angle of the astrogator's black head told Kartr that. And Mirion, the pilot, hung limply in the torn shock webs before the control board. Blood rilled down his cheeks and dripped from his chin. Did dead men continue to bleed? Kartr didn't think so.

  He drew a slow, experimental breath of his own and knew relief when it was not followed by a stab of pain. Ribs were still intact then, in spite of the slam which had smashed him into his present position.

  He grinned mirthlessly as he stretched arms and legs with the same caution. Sometimes it paid to be a tough, uncivilized frontier barbarian.

  The lights flickered and went off. It was then that Kartr almost panicked, in spite of his carefully nurtured veteran's calm. He grabbed at the door latch and pulled. Sharp stabs of agony shot from his injured wrist and jerked him back to sanity. He wasn't sealed in, the door had moved an inch or so. He could get out.

  Must get out and find the medico to look at Mirion. The pilot should not be moved until they knew the extent of his injuries-

  Then Kartr remembered. The medico wasn't around any more. Hadn't been with them since three-or was it four?-planets back. The ranger shook his aching head and frowned. That loss of memory was almost worse than the pain in his arm. He mustn't lose his grip!

  Three planet landings back-that was it! When they had beaten off the Greenies' rush after the ship's nose blaster had gone dead on them, Medico Tork had gone down, a poison dart right through his throat.

  Kartr shook his head again and began to work patiently, with one hand, at the door. It seemed a very long time before he was able to force it open far enough for a person to squeeze through. A blue beam suddenly shot up at him through the gap.

  "Kartr! Latimir! Mirion!" The roll call followed the light.

  Only one man on board carried a blue torch.

  "Rolth!" Kartr identified him. Somehow it was encouraging that it should be one of his own squad of specialist-explorers waiting below. "Latimir got it, but Mirion is still living, I think. Can you come up? My wrist seems to be broken-"

  He edged back to let the other squirm through. The thin blue spear of light swept across Latimir's body and centered on the pilot. Then the torch tube was thrust into Kartr's good hand as Rolth crawled over to untangle the webbing which held the unconscious man.

  "How bad are we?" Kartr raised his voice to be heard over the moans now coming from the pilot.

  "I do not know. Our ranger quarters came through all right, but the hatch to the drive section is jammed and when I beat on it there was no answer-"

  Kartr tried to remember who had been on duty with the drive. They were so ruinously shorthanded that everyone was doing another's job. Even the rangers were pressed into the once jealously guarded

  Patrol duties. It had been that way ever since the Greenie attack.

  "Kaatah-" A call more hiss than word came from the passage.

  "Okay." The sergeant responded almost automatically. "Got a real light, Zinga? Rolth's up here, but you know how far his two-for-a-credit shiner goes-"

  "Fylh is hunting out one of the big spots," the newcomer answered. "You have trouble?"

  "Latimir is dead. Mirion's still breathing-but there's no telling how bad he is hurt. Rolth says that the drive room gang didn't answer at all. You all right?"

  "Yes. Rylh and I and Smitt of the crew. We were bumped a little but nothing serious. Hah-"

  A yellow-red beam of some brilliance silhouetted the speaker.

  "Fylh brings a battle torch-"

  Zinga climbed up and went to work with Rolth. They had Mirion free and flat on the plating before

  Kartr asked his next question.

  "How about the Captain?"

  Zinga turned his head slowly, almost as if he were unwilling to answer that. His agitation, as usual, was betrayed by the quiver in the pointed neck frill of skin, which would not lie flat on his shoulders when he was worried or excited.

  "Smitt has gone to seek him. We do not know-"

  "One spot of luck in the whole knock out." That was Rolth, his voice as usual unemotional. "This is an

  Arth type planet. Since we aren't going to lift off it again in a hurry we'd better thank the Spirit of

  Space for that!"

  An Arth type planet-one on which the crew of this particular ship could breathe without helmets, walk without discomfort of alien gravity, probably eat and drink natural products without fear of sudden death. Kartr eased his wrist across his knee. That was pure luck. The Starfire might have blown anywhere within the past three months-she had been held together only with wire and hope.

  But to blow on an Arth type world was better fortune for her survivors than they would have dared pray for after the black disappointments of the past few years, years of too many missions and no refittings.

  "It
hasn't been burnt off either," he observed almost absently.

  "Why should it have been?" inquired Fylh, his voice tinged with almost cheerful mockery-but mockery which also had a bite in it. "This system is far off our maps-very far removed from all the benefits of our civilization!"

  The benefits of Central Control civilization, yes. Kartr blinked as that struck home. His own planet,

  Ylene, had been burnt off five years ago-during the Two-Sector Rebellion. And yet he sometimes still dreamed of taking the mail packet back, of wearing his ranger uniform, proud with the Five

  Sector Bars and the Far Roving Star, of going up into the forest country-to a little village by the north sea. Burnt off-! He had never been able to visualize boiled rock where that village had stood-or the dead cinder which was the present Ylene-a horrible monument to planetary war.

  Zinga worked on his wrist and put it in a sling. Kartr was able to help himself as they angled Mirion through the door. By the time they had the pilot resting in the lounge the Patrolman, Smitt, came in, towing a figure so masked in head bandages as to be unrecognizable.

  "Commander Vibor?" Kartr hazarded. He was on his feet, his shoulders squared, his heels brought smartly together so that the vlis hide of his boots rasped faintly.

  The bandaged head swung toward him.

  "Ranger Kartr?"

  "Yes, sir!"

  "Who else-?" The voice began with customary briskness but then it trailed off into a disconcerting silence.

  Kartr frowned. The vlis skin gave off another whisper as he shifted his feet.

  "Of the Patrol-Latimir is dead, sir. We have Mirion here-hurt. And Smitt is okay. The Rangers

  Fylh, Rolth, Zinga, and myself are all right. Rolth reports that the drive room hatch is jammed and that no one replied when he pounded on it. We will investigate that now, sir. Also the crew's quarters."

  "Yes-yes- Carry on, Ranger."

  Smitt jumped just in time to catch and ease that lank, limp body to the floor. Commander Vibor was in no shape to resume command.

  Kartr knew again a touch of that panic which had gripped him when the lights had failed. Commander

  Vibor-the man they had come to believe was a rock of certainty and security in their chaotic world- He sucked in the tainted air of the too old ship and accepted the situation.

  "Smitt." He turned first to the Patrol com-techneer, who by all the rigid rules of the service certainly outranked a mere ranger sergeant. "Can you take over with the Commander and Mirion?"

  Smitt did have some medico training, he had acted as Tork's assistant once or twice.

  "Right." The shorter man did not even look up as he bent over the moaning pilot. "Go along and check the rest of the wreckage, fly-boy-"

  Fly-boy, eh? Well, the high and mighty senior service of the Patrol should be glad that the fly-boys were with them during this tour of duty. Rangers were trained to calculate and use the products of any strange world. After a crack up they would certainly be more at home in an alien wilderness than

  Patrol-crewmen.

  Holding his injured arm tightly to his chest Kartr made his way back along the corridor, followed by the begoggled Rolth, his eyes shaded against what was to him the violent fire cast by the ordinary beam torch the sergeant clutched in his good hand. Zinga and Fylh brought up the rear, having armed themselves, as Kartr noted, with a portable flamer to cut through jammed bulkheads.

  Even with that it took them a good ten minutes to break the hatch of the drive room. And in spite of the clamor they made during the process there came no answer from within. Kartr steeled himself inwardly and pushed through first. He looked only once at what was caught in the full shaft of his beam and then backed out, sick and shaking. The others, seeing his face, asked no questions.

  As he leaned against the edge of the battered door fighting nausea they all heard the pounding from the tail section.

  "Who-?"

  Fylh answered. "Armory and supplies-that would be Jaksan, Cott, Snyn, Dalgre." He counted them off on the tips of his claw-boned fingers. "They must be-"

  "Yes." Kartr was already leading the rescue party toward the sound.

  Again they had to apply the white-hot energy of the flamer to buckled metal. And then they must wait until they metal had cooled before three battered and blood-streaked men came crawling through.

  Jaksan-yes, Kartr would have wagered a year's pay credits that the tough, very tough, Patrol arms officer would survive. And Snyn and Dalgre.

  Jaksan began to speak even before he got to his feet again.

  "How is it?"

  "Smitt's okay. The Commander has some head injuries. Mirion's bad. The rest-" Kartr's hands swept out in a gesture from his childhood-one of those strange barbarian exuberances he had been so careful to suppress during his service years.

  "The ship-"

  "I'm a ranger, no Patrol techneer. Maybe Smitt could tell you better about that. He's the nearest to an expert that we have left."

  Jaksan's fingernails rasped in the stubble on his unshaven chin. There was a long rip in his right sleeve, an oozing scratch under it. He stared at the three rangers absently. Already he was probably cutting losses. If the Starfire could function again it would be because of his drive and determination.

  "The planet?"

  "Arth type. Mirion was trying to set down in what looked like open country when the tubes blew. No traces of civilization noted before landing." This information was Kartr's own territory and he answered with confidence.

  If the rangers' sleds hadn't been too badly banged up they could break one out soon and begin exploring. There was, of course, the fuel problem. There might be enough in sled tanks for one trip-with a very even chance that the scouting party would walk home. Unless the Starfire was definitely done for and they could tap her supply- But that could all be gone into later. At least they could take a look now at their immediate surroundings.

  "We'll sortie." Kartr's voice was crisp and assured and asked no permission from Jaksan-or any crewman. "Smitt is with the Commander and Mirion in the lounge-"

  The Patrol officer nodded. This return to routine was correct, right. It seemed to steady them all, Kartr observed, as he found his way into the ranger's own domain. Fylh was there before him, freeing their packs from the general jumble the crash had made of their supplies. Kartr shook his head.

  "Not full packs. We won't go more than a quarter mile. And, Rolth," he added over his shoulder to the begoggled Faltharian in the doorway, "you stay here. Arth sun is bad for your eyes. Your turn will come after nightfall."

  Rolth nodded and went toward the lounge. Kartr picked up an explorer's belt with one hand but Zinga took it from him.

  "This I do. Stand still." The other's scaled digits buckled and snapped the vlis hide band and its dangling accouterments about the sergeant's flat waist. He gave a wriggle to settle the weight in the familiar balance. No need to pick up a disrupter-he couldn't fire it with one hand. The short blaster would have to serve as his sole weapon.

  Luckily they had not landed air-lock side down. To burn and burrow their way out was a job none of them would have cared for just then. But they only had to hammer loose the hatch and climb through,

  Kartr being boosted by his companions. Then they slid down the dull and scored metal to the still smoking ground, ran across that to the clean earth beyond the range of the blast. Once there they halted and wheeled to look back at the ship.

  "Bad-" Fylh's chirp put all their dismay into words. "She will not lift from here again."

  Well, Kartr was no mech-techneer, but he would endorse that. The wrenched and broken-backed ship before them would certainly never ride the space lanes again, even if they could get her to a refitting dock. And the nearest of those was, Space knew, how many suns away!

  "Why should we worry about that?" asked Zinga mildly. "Since we first set out on this voyage we guessed that there would be for us no return-"

  Yes, they had feared that, deep in their hearts, in the bac
ks of their minds, with that flutter of terror and loneliness which plucked at a man's nerves as he rode between system and stars. But none of them had before admitted it openly to another. None-unless-

  Maybe the humans had not admitted it, but the Bemmys might have. Loneliness had long since become a part of their lives-they were so often the only individuals of their respective species aboard a ship. If Kartr felt alien in Patrol crews because he was not only a specialized ranger but also a barbarian from a frontier system, what must Fylh or Zinga feel-they who could not even claim the kinship of a common species?

  Kartr turned away from the broken ship to study the sandy waste studded with rock outcrops. It must be close to midday and the sun beat down heavily upon them. Under this wave of heat Zinga thrived.