CHAPTER
3
IN ThE SAME MOMENT, ThE OTHER SHIPS OP WANDER SECTION
were appearing around the ancient spaceship. Their magnetic
beams licked out and locked-and held-a fraction of a sec-
ond before La Chasse Gallerie bucked like a wild horse and
tried to escape with a surge at many gravities of acceleration.
Taken by surprise by a power kick that should have killed
any human aboard the long-lost vessel, the mass of the five
other ships still naanaged to hold her back.
"Hold-" Jim was whispering into the headpiece of his suit
and circuits were translating his old-fashioned phrases into
blinking signal lights beamed at the cone-shaped ship. "Hold,
La Chasse Gallerie. This is a Government Rescue Contingent,
title Wander Section. Do not resist. We are taking you in
tow-" The unfitness of the ancient word jarred in Jim's
mouth as he said it. "We're taking you in tow to return you to
your Base Headquarters. Repeat..."
The flashing lights went on spelling the message out, over
and over again. La Chasse Gallerie ceased fighting and hung
docilely in the net of magnetic forces. Jim got a talk beam
touching on the aged hull.
“…home," a voice was saying, the same voice he had
heard recorded in Mollen's office. "Chez ....." It broke
into a tangle of French that Jim could not follow, and emerged
in accented English with the cadence of poetry. .... . Poleon,
hees sojer never fight-more brave as dem poor habitants-
Chenier, he try for broke de rank~henier come dead imm~
diatement..."
"La Chasse Gallerie. La Chasse Gallerie," Jim was say
ing over and over, while the blinking lights on his hull trans-
formed the words into a ship's code over a century dead. "Can
you understand me? Repeat, can you understand me? If so,
acknowledge. Acknowledge .....
There was no response from the dust-scarred hull, slashed
by the Laagi weapons. Only the voice, reciting what Jim now
recognized as a poem by William Henry Drummond, one of
the early poets to write in the French-accented English of the
Canadian habitant in the nineteenth century.
“....De gun dey rattle lak' tonnere-" muttered on the
voice. "Just bang, bang, bang! Dat's way she go-" Abruptly
the voice of Raoul Penard shifted to poetry; in the pure French
of another poem by a medieval prisoner looking out the tower
window of his prison on the springtime, the shift was in per
fect cadence and rhyme with the earlier line.
"Le ten~ps a laiss6 ton manteau-de ven', ~ froidure, et
depluje..."
"It's no use," said Mary. "We'll have to get him back to
Earth and treatment before you'll be able to get through to
him."
"All right," said Jim. "Then we'll head-"
The moan of an interior siren blasted through his suit.
"Laagi!" yelped the voice of Fourth Helen. "Five bandits,
sector six-"
"Bandits. Two bandits, sector two, fifteen hundred kilome
ters-" broke in the voice of Lela".
Jim swore and slapped his fingers down on the buttons.
With all ships locked together, his phase-shift impulse was
sorted automatically through the computer center of each one,
so that they all shifted together in the direction and distance he
had programmed. There was the wrench of shift-feeling-and
sudden silence.
The siren had cut off. The voices were silent. Automatic
-dispersal had taken place, and the other four ships were
spreading out rapidly to distances up to a thousand kilometers
on all sides, their receptors probing the empty' space for half a
-light-year in each direction, quivering, seeking, while And-
Friend stayed locked to La Chasse Gallerie.
"Looks like we got away." Mary's voice was eerie in its
naturalness, breaking the stillness in Jim's headpiece. "Looks
like they lost us."
"The hell they did!" said Jim savagely. "They'll have un-
manned detector probes strung out all the way from here to the
Frontier. They know we're not going anyplace else."
"Then we better jump again-"
"Not yet! Shut up, will you!" Jim bit the words off hard at
his lips. "The more they collect to hit us with here, the more
we leave behind when we jump again. Sit still back there and
keep your mouth shut. You're a gunner now, not a talker."
"Yes sir." There was no mockery in Mary's voice. This
time Jim did not comment on the "sir."
The seconds moved slowly with the sweep hand of the
clock in front of Jim. The mind-unit had made its calculations
and was [eady to move. He waited. Inside the headpiece, his
face was dripping with perspiration. The blood creaked in his
ears-
Moan of siren!
"Laagi!" shouted Fair Maid. "Four bandits-"
"Bandits!"
Suddenly the helmet was full of warning cries from all the
ships. The telltale sphere in front of Jim came alive with the
green dots of laaagi ships, over and beyond the white dots of
his own Section.
They came on, the green dots, with the illusion of seeming
to spread apart as they advanced. They came on and...
Suddenly they were gone. They had winked out, disap-
peared as if they had never been there in the first place.
"Formation Charlie," said Jim tonelessly to the other four
ships. They shifted their relative po~fions. Jim sat silent,
sweat dripping off his chin inside his Suit. He could feel the
growing tension in the woman behind him.
"Jump!" It was a whisper torn from a raw throat in Mary.
"Why don't you jump?"
"Where to?" whispered back Jim. '4They'll have planet-
based computers the size of small cities working on our pro-
babilities of movement now. Anywhere we jump now in a
straight line for the Frontier, they'll be waiting for us."
"Then jump to a side point. Evade them!"
"If we do that," whispered Jim, "we'll have to ~calcu-
late." He suddenly realized the other's whispering had brought
him to lower his own voice to a thread. Deliberately he spoke
out loud, but with transmission of the conversation to the
other ships of the Section blocked off. "Recalculation takes
time. They'll be using that time to find us-and they've got
bigger and better equipment for it than the computing centers
aboard these little ships of ours.
"But what're we waiting for? Why'd they go away?
Shouldn't we go now-"
"No!" snarled Jim. "They went away because they thought
there weren't enough of them."
"Not enough? There were twice our number-"
"Not enough," said Jirn. "They want to kill us all at one
swat. They don't want any of us to escape. It's not just La
Charse Gallerie. Enemy ships can't be allowed to get this
deep into their territory and live. We'd do the same thing if
Iaaagi ships came into our space. We'd have to make an object
lesson of them-so they wouldn't be tempted to try again."
"But-"
"Laagi~Laagi! laaagi!-"
Suddenly the pilots of all the vessels were shouting at
once. Jim's hand slammed down on a button and four screens
woke to life, showing the interior of the other four ships. The
sight and sound of the other pilots and gunners were there
before his eyes.
The spherical telltale was alive with green dots, closing in
from all sectors of the area, racing to englobe Wander Section.
“Hector! Pattern Hector!" Jim heard his own voice shout-
ing to the other ships. "Hector! Hit, break out, and Check
Ten. Check Ten....
They were driving toward one group of the approaching
green lights. La Chasse Gallerie was driving with them. Over
the shouting back and forth of the Wander Section pilots came
the voice of Raoul Penard, shouting, singing-a strange, lu-
gubrious tune but in the cadence and tone of a battle song. As
if through the winds of a nightanare, Jim heard him....
F'renchnsan, he don't lat to die in defall!
When de n'airsh she a'n sof'll of de game!
An de little bool-frog, he's roll veree fat…
An de leetle nsooshrat, he's jus' & same!…
The feeble ime's of the old ship reached o~t to~a'd the
ncorning Laagi lights that were ships, pathetically wide of
their nrark. Somethitig winked up ahead and suddenly the soft,
uncollapsed point of the primitive, dust-scarred hull was no
longer there. Then Waader Section had closed with some eight
of the enemy.
AndFriend suddenly bucked and screamed. Her internel
temperatnre shot up momentarily to nearly two hundred de
grees as a glancing blow from the light-weapon of one of the
Laagi brushed her. There was a moment of insanity. Flame
ftickered suddenly in the interior of Fair Maid, obscuring the
picture of it on the screen before Jim. Then they were all past
the enemy ships and Jim cried "Transmit!" at the same time
that he locked his own magnetic beams on the chopped hull of
La Chasse Gallerie and tried to take her through the jump
alone.
It should not have been possible. But some sixth sense in
the singing, crazed mind of Racul Penard seemed to under-
stand what Jim was trying. The two ships jusnped together
under An~nend's control, and suddenly all six ships floated
within sight of each other amid the peace and darkness of
empty space and the alien stars.
Into this silence came a soft sob from one of the other
vessels. Jim looked and saw the charred interior of the Fair
Maid. Her pilot was out of his seat and half-crouched before
the equally charred, barrel-suited figure in the gunner's chalr.
"Fair Maid!" Jim had to repeat the call, more sharply.
"Fair Maid! Acknowledge!"
The pilot's headpiece lifted. The sobbing stopped.
"Fair Maid here." The voice was thick-tongued, drag~
sounding. "I had to shoot my gunner, Wander Leader. She was
bunning up inside her suit. I had to shoot my gunner. She was
burning up inside her-"
"Fair Maid!" snap- Jim. "Can you still compute and
jump?"
"Yes..." said the drugged voice. "I can compute and
jump, Wander Leader."
"All right, Fair Maid," said Jim. "You're to jump wide-
angle off outside Iaaagi territory and then make your own way
back to our side of the Frontier. We're close enough to outside
both territories for that now. Have you got it? Jump wide, and
make your own way back. Jump far enough so that it won't be
worth the trouble to the Laagi to go after you."
"No!" The voice lost some of its druggedness. "I'm stay-
ing, Wander Leader. I'm going to kill some-"
"Fair Maid!" Jim heard his own voice snarling into his
headpiece. "This Section has a mission-to bring back the
ship we've just picked up in laaagi territory! You're no good
on that mission-you're no good to this Section without a
gunner. Jump wide and go home! Do you hear me? That's an
order. Jump wide and go home!"
There was a momen~s silence, and then the pilot's figure
moved and turned slowly back to sit down before his controls.
"Acknowledge, Fair Maid!" snapped Jim.
"Acknowledge," came the lifeless voice of the pilot in the
burned interior of the ship. "Jumping wide and going home."
"Out then," said Jim in a calmer voice. "Good luck getting
back. So long, Jet'ry'."
"So long, Wander Leader," came the numb reply. The
gloved hands moved on the singed controls. Fair Maid van-
ished.
Jim sat back wearily in his pilot's chair. Hammering into
his ears came the voice of Raoul Penard, now crooning an-
other verse of his battle song....
... Come all you beeg Canada man.
Who want find work on Meeshegan,
Dere's beeg log drive all troo our Ian',
You sure fin' work on Meesh-
In a sudden reflex of rage, Jim's hand slapped down on a
button, cutting off in midword the song from La Chasse Gal-
lerie.
"Jim!"
The word was like a whip cracking across his back. Jim
started awake to the fact of his passenger-gunner behind him.
"What?" he asked.
"I think I've got my second wind in this race," answered
the even, cold voice of Mary. "Meanwhile, how about turning
Penard back on? My job's to record everything I can get from
him, and I can't do that with the talk beam between his ship
and ours shut off."
"The Fair Maid's gunner just died-"
"Thun the talk beam on!"
Jim reached out and turned it on, wondering a little at him-
self. I should feel like shooting her at this moment, he
thought. Why don't I? Penard's voice sang at him once again.
"Look," Jim began. "When a woman dies and a ship may
be lost-"
"Have you looked at Penard's ship, Major?" interrupted the
voice of Mary. "Take a look. Then maybe you'll understand
why I want the talk beam on just as long as there's any use."
Jim turned and looked at the screen that showed the cone-
shaped vessel. He stared.
If La Chasse GaUerie had been badly cut up before, she
was a floating chunk of scrap now. She had been slashed deep
in half a dozen directions by the light beams of the Laagi
ships. And the old-fashioned ceramet material of her hull,
built before collapsed metals had been possible, had been
opened up like cardboard under the edge of red-hot knives.
Jim stared, hearing the voice of Penard singing in his ears,
and an icy trickle went down his perspiration-soaked spine.
"He can't be alive," Jim heard himself saying. If a hit that
did not even penetrate the collapsed metal hull of the Fair
Maid could turn that ship's interior into a charred, if work-
able, area-what must those light-weapons of the enemy have
done to the interior of the old ship he looked at now? But
Raoul still sang from there his song about lumbering in Mee
shegan.
"-Nobody could be alive in that," Jim said. "I was right.
It must be just his semianimate control system parroting him
and running the ship. Even at that, it's a miracle it's still
working-"
"We don't know," Mary's voioe cut in on him. "And uritil
we know we have to assume it's Racul himself, still alive.
After all, his coming back at all is an impossible miracle. If
that could happen, it could happen he's still alive in that ship
now. Maybe he's picked up some kind of protection we don't
know about."
Jim shook his head, forgetting that probably Mary could
not see this silent negative. It was not possible that Penard
was alive. But-he roused himself back to his duty. He had a
job to do.
His fingers began to dance over the black buttons in their
ranks before him, working out the situation, planning his next
move.
"K formation," he said automatically to the other ships, but
did not even glance at the telltale sphere to make sure they
obeyed correctly. Slowly, the situation took form. He was
down one ship, from five to four of them, and that reduced the
number of practical fighting and maneuvering formations by a
factor of better than three. And there was something else....
"Mary," he said slowly.
"Yes, Jim?"
"I want your opinion on something," said Jim. "When we
jumped out of the fight area just now, it was a jump off the
direct route home and to the side by nearly sixteen light-years;
and of course we carried La Chasse Gallerie with us, out of
the direct route to home she's been on since we first found her.
Penard let me do that without fighting me with his own con
trols. Now, what I want to know is-and it ought to be impos
sible that he's got power on that hulk, anyway, but he
obviously has-will he let me move him from now on with
out fighting me, once I slap a magnetic on him? In other
words, whether he's a man or a semianimate control, was that
a fluke last time, or can I count on it happening again?"
Mary did not answer imediately.Then...
"I think you can count on him trusting you," she said. "If
Raoul Penard is alive in there, the fact that he reacted sensibly
once ought to be some indication he'll do it again. And if
you're right about it being just a control center driving that
ship, then it should react consistenfly in the same pattern to
the same stimulus."
"Yean said Jim softly. "But I wonder which it is-is
Penard in there, alive or dead? Is it a man we're trying to get
out? Or a control center?"
"Does it matter?" said the level voice of Mary'.
Jim looked bleakly into the vision screens fed by his in-
struments
"Not to you, does it?" he said. "But I'm the man that has to
order men to kill themselves to get that ship home." Some-
thing tightened in his throat. "You know that's what hit me
when I first saw you in Mollen's oftice, but I didn't know
what it was. You haven't got guts inside you, you ve got sta-
tistical tables and a computer."
He could hear his own harsh breathing in the headpiece of
his suit once he had said it.
"You think so?" said Mary's voice grimly. "And how about
you, Jim? The accidents of birth and change while you were
growing up gave you a one-in-billions set of mind and re-
flexes. You grew up to be a white knight and to slay dragons.
Now you're in the dragon-slaying business and something's
gone 'wrong with it you can't quite figure out. Something's
gone sour, hasn't it?"
Jim did not answer. He was sweating again.
"You know," said Mary, "I think you've got a bad case of
combat fatigue; but you won't quit and you're so valuable that
people like Mollen won't make you quit."
"Play-patty psychiatrist, are you?" demanded Jim through
gritted teeth. Mary ignored him.
"You think I didn't have a chance to look at your personal
history before I met you?" said Mary. "You ought to know
better than to think that. You're a Canadian yourself, and your
background is Scotch and French. That, plus the way you've
been reacting to hearing Raoul Penard, ought to be all anyone
needs to know to read the signs-and the signs all read the
same way-
"Shut up!" husked Jim, the words choking in his throat.
"The signs read dead, Major. All of them, including th...
Januszek66