The Stars Are Ours! a-1 Page 8

  The door on the porch which ran the side length of the house opened before they had taken two steps along the cleaned boards. A woman waited for them, her hands tugging smooth a food-spattered apron, an uneasy half-smirk spreading her lips to display a missing front tooth.

  “Pax, noble sirs-Pax.” Her voice was as fat and oily as her body and sounded more assured than her expression.

  Kimber sketched a version of the official salute and rapped out an answering “Pax—” in an authority-heavy tone.

  “This is- ?”

  Grotesquely she bobbed in an attempt at a curtsey. “The farm of Hew Folley, noble sir.”

  “And where is this Folley?” Kimber asked as if he expected the missing landsman to spring up before him.

  “He is dead, sir. Murdered by outlaws. I thought that was why- But come in, noble sirs, come in—” She waddled back a step leaving the entrance to the kitchen open.

  The rich smell of food caught at Dard’s throat, until, for a second, he was almost nauseated. There were thick dishes on the stained table, and congealed grease, a fragment of bread, a half cup of herb tea, marked the remains of a late breakfast.

  Without answering the woman’s half-question Kimber seated himself on the nearest chair and with an outstretched arm swept the used dishes from before him. Dard dropped down opposite to the pilot, thankful for the support the hard wooden seat gave his trembling body.

  “You have food, woman?” Kimber demanded. “Get it. We have been walking over this forsaken country for hours. Is there a messenger here we can send into town? Our ’copter is down and we must have the repair crew.”

  She was busy at the stove, breaking eggs, real eggs into a greasy skillet.

  “Food, yes, noble sirs. But a messenger-since my man is dead I have only the slaves, and they are under lock and key. There is no one to send.”

  “You have no son?” Kimber helped himself to a piece of bread.

  Her nervous smirk stretched to a smile. “Yes, noble sir, I have a son. But only this month he was chosen by the House of the Olive Branch. He is now in training for your own service, noble sir.”

  If she expected this information to unbend her visitors and soften their manners she was disappointed for Kimber merely raised his eyebrows before he continued:

  “We can’t walk to town ourselves, woman. Have you no one at all you can send?”

  “There is Lotta.” She went to the door and called the girl’s name harshly. “With Hew gone she must see to the cows. But it is a long walk to town, noble sir.”

  “Then ride-or how do you get there when you go woman?” Kimber slid three eggs onto his plate and pushed the still laden platter over to Dard, who, a little dazed by the sight of such a wealth of food, made haste to help himself before it vanished.

  “There is the colt. She might ride,” the woman agreed reluctantly.

  “Then let her get to it. I don’t intend to sit out the whole of this day waiting for help. The sooner she goes, the better!”

  “You want me?”

  Dard knew that voice. For a long moment he dared not look up. But that inner compulsion which made him always face danger squarely raised his eyes to meet those of the girl standing in the half-open door. His fingers curled around the handle of the fork and bent it a trifle. But Lotta’s stolid expression did not change and he could only hope that his own face was as blank.

  “You want me?” she repeated.

  The woman nodded at the two Peacemen. “These gentlemen-their ’copter broke down. They want you should take a message to town for them. Git the colt out and ride.”

  “All right.” The girl tramped out and slammed the door behind her.

  7: BATTLE AT THE BARRIER

  DARD CHEWED mechanically on food which now had no savor. As Kimber forked a thick slice of ham he spoke to the pilot:

  “Shall I give the girl instructions, sir?”

  Kimber swallowed. “Very well. Be sure she gets it straight. I don’t propose to sit around here waiting for a couple of days. Let her tell the repair master they may find us at the ’copter. We’ll go back there after we thaw out. But get her started right away-the sooner she leaves the sooner they will come for us.”

  Dard went out into the farmyard. Lotta was saddling a horse. As his boots squeaked on the snow she looped up.

  “Where’s Dessie? Wotta you done with her?”

  “She’s safe.”

  Lotta studied his face before she nodded. “That’s the truth, ain’t it? You really want I should go to town? Why? You ain’t no Peaceman—”

  “No. And the more you can delay your trip in, the better. But Lotta—” he had to give her some protection. If later she were suspected of aiding their escape her fate would not be pleasant. “When you get in and report at the Temple, tell them you are suspicious of us. We’ll be gone from here by then.”

  With her chin she pointed to the house. “Don’t you trust her none. She ain’t my ma-Folley wasn’t really my pa, neither. My pa was kin and Folley, he wanted the land pa left so they took me in. Don’t you trust her none at all- she’s worse’n Folley was. I’ll ride slow goin’ in, and I’ll do like you say when I git there. Lissen here, Dard, you sure Dessie’s gonna be all right?”

  “She is if we can get back to her. She’ll have a chance to live the way she ought to—”

  The small eyes in the girl’s pasty face were shrewd. “And that’s a promise! You git outta here and take her too. I’ll make up a good story for ’em. I ain’t,” she suddenly smiled at him, “I ain’t near as dumb as I look, Dard Nordis, even if I ain’t one of your kind!”

  She scrambled awkwardly into the saddle and slapped the ends of the reins so that the horse broke into a trot.

  Dard went back to the house and sat down at the table with a better appetite. Kimber broke off man-sized bites of apple tart, and between them he addressed his junior.

  “Now that it’s day, I’ve been thinking that we may be able to check the bus over ourselves. You, woman,” he said to their unwilling hostess, “can you direct them on to join us if we don’t return?”

  Dard pressured Kimber’s foot with the toe of his boot in warning. And received a return nudge of acknowledgement.

  “Which way you goin’?” she asked. Dard thought that some of her deference was gone. Was she beginning to suspect that she was not really entertaining two of the new lords of the land?

  “North. We’ll leave a trail, have to back track on your own. Suppose you put us up some grub so we’ll have something at noon. And just send the repair crew along.”

  “Yes, noble sirs.”

  But that acknowledgement was almost grudging and she was spending a long time putting aside some pieces of cold meat and bread. Or did his jumpy nerves make him imagine that, wondered Dard.

  A half hour later they left the house. They kept to the lane and then to the road leading north until a grove cut off their path from any watcher. It was then that Kimber faced west.

  “Where now?”

  “There’s a trail farther on that doubles back up into the hills,” Dard informed him. “It cuts across the old woods road near that tree where I met Sach.”

  “Good. I leave the guide duty up to you. But let’s move! That girl may make a quick trip in—”

  “She’ll delay all she can. She knows—”

  Kimber’s lips shaped a soundless whistle. “That will help - if she is working for us.”

  “I told her that it meant saving Dessie. Dessie’s the only one she cares about.”

  The warmth, good food, and short rest they had had at Folley’s gave them heart and strength for the trail ahead. After two false tries Dard found the woods road. Along it there was an earlier trail breaking the snow, made by Lotta, he guessed.

  Kimber set an easy pace, knowing the grueling miles which still lay ahead. They took a lengthy rest at the rude lean-to by the message tree. The woods were unnaturally still and the sun reflected from patches of snow, making them squint against t
he glare.

  From the message tree on; it was a matter of following the traces he himself had helped to make. Luckily, Dard congratulated himself, there had been no more snow and the broken path was easy to follow. But both were tired and slowed against their will as they slogged their way toward the heights which held the cave. There they could rest, Dard promised his aching body. They paused to eat, to breathe, and then on and on and on. Dard lost all track of time, it was a business of following in a robot fashion those other marks in the snow.

  They had reached the lower slopes of the rise which would take them to the cave when he leaned against a tree. Kimber’s face, stark and drawn, all the easy good humor pounded out of it by fatigue, was in outline against a snowbank.

  It was in that moment of silence that Dard caught the distant sound-very faint, borne to them by some freak of air current-the bay of a hunting dog running a fresh and uncomplicated trail. Kimber’s head jerked up. Dard ran his tongue around a dry mouth. That cave up there with its narrow entrance! He wasted no breath on explanation, instead he began doggedly to climb.

  But- there was something wrong about the stone before them. Maybe his eyes-snow blindness-Dard shook his head, trying to clear them. But that different look remained. So that he was partly expecting what he found when he reached the crest. Sick, shaken to the point of nausea, he stared at the closed door of the cave-closed with rocks and something else-and then he reeled retching to the other side of the hill top.

  He was scrubbing out his mouth with a handful of snow when Kimber joined him.

  “So, now we know about Sach—”

  Dard raised sick eyes. The pilot’s mouth was stone-hard.

  “Left him there like that as a threat,” muttered Kimber, “and a warning. They must have discovered that this was one of our regular posts.”

  “How could any one do that?”

  “Listen, son, somebody starts out with an idea-maybe in the beginning a good one. Renzi wasn’t a crook, he was basically a decent man. I heard his early speeches and I’m willing to agree that much he said was true. But he had no-well, ’charity’ is the best word for it. He wanted to force his pattern for living on everyone else, for their own good, of course. Because he was great and sincere in his own way he gained a following of honest people. They were sick of war and they were terribly shocked by the Big Burn, they could readily believe that science had led to evil. The Free Scientists were too independent-they made closed guilds of their teams. There was a separation between thinking and feeling. And feeling is easier to us than thinking. So Renzi appealed to feeling, and against the aloofness of science he won. He was joined by other fanatics, and by those who want power no matter how it comes into their hands. Then there has always been some human beings who enjoy that sort of thing-what we just saw over there. They’re lower than animals because animals don’t torture their own kind for pleasure. Fanatics, power lovers, sadists-let them get a tight hold on the government and there is no room for decency. The best this world can hope for now is a break in their ranks, an inner struggle for control.

  “This type of fight against freedom of thought and tolerance has happened before. Centuries ago there was the Inquisition in the name of religion. And during the twentieth century the dictators did the same under political systems of one kind or another. Fanatic belief in an idea-a conviction that an idea or a nation is greater than the individual man-it has scrounged us again and again. Utter power over his fellow men changes a man, rots him through and through. When we are able to breed men who want no influence over each other-who are content to strive equally for a common goal-then we’ll pull ourselves above that-"He gestured to that pitiful thing now hidden from their eyes. “The Free Scientists came close to reaching that point. Which is why Renzi and his kind both hated and feared them. But they were only a handful-drops lost in a sea. And they went under as have others before them who have followed the same vision. Nothing worse can he done to man than what he has done to himself. But listen to this—”

  Kimber’s head was high, he was watching that peak which guarded the distant Cleft. Now he repeated slowly:

  “’Frontiers of any type, physical or mental, are but a challenge to our breed. Nothing can stop the questing of men, not even Man. If we will it, not only the wonders of space, hut the very stars are ours!’ ”

  “The stars are ours!” echoed Dard. “Who said that?”

  “Techneer Vidor Chang, one of our martyrs. He helped to bring the star ship here, ventured out on the first fuel research and- But his words remain ours.

  “That’s what we’ve geared our lives to, we outlaws. It doesn’t matter what a man was in the past-Free Scientist, techneer, laborer, farmer, soldier-we’re all one because we believe in freedom for the individual, in the rights of man to grow and develop as far as he can. And we are daring to search for a place where we can put those beliefs into practice. The earth denied us-we must seek the stars.”

  Kimber started down slope. Dard caught up to point out the ruse which he had used with Dessie and which might now baffle the hounds. They found a higher ledge and made a more perilous dive, so that Dard landed on pine boughs and spilled to the earth with a jolt which drove the breath out of his lungs until Kimber pounded air back into him.

  To his surprise the pilot did not keep to cover now. The night was falling fast and they could not hold their present pace without rest. But Kimber plunged on until they came to the open space flanking the river. There the pilot brought out the same flat disc with which he had cut their way out of the temple barrier, and hurled it out into the open.

  A column of green fire shot from it up into the night, standing steady for at least five minutes. In the dusk it made a good show, turning the surrounding snow and the faces of the fugitives verdant as it burned.

  “Now we wait,” Kimber’s voice held a faint shadow of the old humor. “The boys will be down to pick us up before Pax can connect,”

  But waiting was not so simple when each minute meant the difference between life and death. They swallowed the last of the food and bedded down between two fallen trees at the edge of the clearing. The flame died down, but a core of green glow would continue to shine for several hours, Kimber said.

  A wind was rising. And its wails through the trees did not drown out the distant yapping of the hounds. Dard fingered his stun gun-two charges for him, one in Kimber’s weapon. Little enough with which to meet what panted on their trail. The trailers would be armed with rifles.

  Kimber stirred and then scuttled on hands and feet out from their shelter. From the night sky a dark shape came down-a ’copter. But the pilot summoned Dard to meet with it. A door opened and he was shoved into the machine by his companion. Then as they were air borne Dard rested his head against a cushion, only half hearing the excited questions and answers of the others.

  When he awoke the whole wild adventure of the past forty-eight hours might only have been a dream, for he was back on the same cot where he had rested before. Only now Kimber was not with him. Dard lay there, trying to separate dream from reality. Then a clang which could only have been an alarm brought him up. With clumsy hands he pulled on the clothes lying in a heap on the floor and opened the door to peer out into the corridor.

  Two men, pushing before them a small cart, crossed its lower end, The cart wheel caught on the edge of a doorway and both men cursed as they worked swiftly to pry it loose. Dard padded in that direction, but before he could join them they were gone. He followed as they broke into a trot and started down a ramp leading into the heart of the mountain.

  This brought them to a large cave which was a scene of complete confusion. Dard hesitated, trying to pick out of the busy throng some familiar face. There were two parties at work. One was carrying and wheeling boxes and containers out into the narrow valley where the star ship was berthed. And in this group women toiled with the men. The second party, which had been joined by the men with the cart, was wholly masculine and all armed.

 
; “Hey, you!”

  Dard realized that he was being hailed by a black- bearded man using a rifle as a baton to direct the movements of the armed force. He went over there, only to have a rifle thrust into his hands and to be urged into line with the men taking a tunnel to the right. They were bound for a defense point, he decided, but no one explained.

  The answer came soon enough with a crackle of rifle fire. What had once been the narrow throat-valley leading into the Cleft proper had been choked up by a fall of tumbled rock and earth cemented by snow, broken in places by the protruding crown or roots of a small tree. Up this dam men were crawling, dragging after them an assortment of weapons, from ordinary rifles and stun guns to a tube and box arrangement totally strange to Dard.

  He counted at least ten defenders who were now ensconced in hollows along the rim of the barrier. Now and again one of these fired, the sound being echoed by the rock walls to twice its normal volume. Dard clambered over the slide, cautiously testing his footing, until he reached the nearest of the snipers’ hollows. The man glanced up as a rolling clod announced his arrival.

  “Get your fool head down, kid!” he snapped. “They’re still trying the ’copter game. You’d think that they’d have learned by nowl”

  Dard wormed his way along until he rubbed shoulders with the defender and could look down into the weird battlefield. He tried to piece out from the wreckage there what had been happening in the hours since he and Kimber had returned.

  Two burnt-out skeletons of ’copters were crumpled among rocks. From one of them thin wisps of vapor still spiraled. And there were four bodies wearing black and white Pax livery. But as far as Dard could see there was nothing alive down there now.

  “Yeah. They’ve all taken t’ cover. Trying to think up some trick that’ll get us away from here. It’ll take time for ’em to get any big guns back in these hills. And they don’t have time. Before they can shake us loose the ship’s going to blast off!”