Planet of no return, p.1
Planet Of No Return, page 1
part #2 of Brion Brandd Series
PLANET OF NO RETURN1: One Man Alone
2: The Smell of Death
3: A Desperate Plan
4: D-Day Minus One
5: Barehanded into Hell
6: Alien Encounter
7: First Contact
8: A Deadly Surprise
9: Electronic Inquisition
10: Taking Charge
11: Trek Into Danger
12: Discovery!
13: The Enemy Revealed
14: Machines That Murder
15: Canyon Quest
16: Secret of the Black Column
17: The Killers
18: Into The Military Mind
19: End of a Mission
* * *
PLANET OF NO RETURN
Harry Harrison
1: One Man Alone
As the small spacecraft plunged into the first thin traces of the planet’s atmosphere it began to glow and burn like a falling meteor. Within seconds the glow spread, quickly changing from red to white as the fractional heat increased. Although the alloy of the metal skin was unbelievably strong it had never been intended to resist temperatures as high as these. Sheets of flame radiated from the nose cone as the metal was torn away, incinerated. Then, just when it appeared that the entire ship would be engulfed in fire and destroyed, the even brighter flames of braking jets lanced through the burning gas. If the craft had been falling out of control it would surely have been destroyed. But the pilot knew what he was doing, had waited until the last possible moment before destruction before firing his engines. To slow the ship’s fall just enough to keep the temperature from rising any higher.
Down through the thick clouds it dropped, down towards the grass covered plain that hurtled ever closer with alarming speed. When it appeared that a fatal crash was inevitable the rockets fired again, hammering at the ship with multiple G deceleration. Still falling rapidly, despite the roaring jets, the ship struck the ground with a resounding crash, depressing the landing shock absorbers to their limit.
As the clouds of steam and dust blew away, a small metal hatch at the apex of the bow ground open and an optic head slowly emerged. It began rotating in a slow circle, scanning the vast sea of grass, the distant trees, the seemingly empty landscape. A herd of animals moved in the distance, bounding away in panic and quickly vanishing from sight. The optic head moved on finally coming to rest on the nearby ruins of the shattered war machines: a vast area of destruction in the cratered plain.
It was a scene of disaster. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the crumpled and gigantic weapons of war were scattered over the battlefield. All of them punctured, bent, torn by immense forces. It was a graveyard of destruction that stretched away almost to the horizon. The optic head scanned back and forth over the rusted hulks, stopped, then drew back into the ship and its cover plate snapped shut. Long minutes passed before the silence was broken by the squeal of metal on metal as the airlock ground slowly open.
More time passed before the man emerged slowly from the opening. His motions were cautious, the muzzle of the ion rifle he held was questing out before him like a hungry animal. He wore heavy space armour with a sealed helmet that used a TV unit for vision. Slowly, without taking his attention from the landscape or his finger from the trigger, the man lowered his free hand and touched the radio button on his wrist.
“I’m continuing my report from outside the ship now. I’m going slow until I get my breath back. My bones ache. I made the landing in free fall and held it at that for just as long as I could. It was a fast landing but I took at least 15 G’s on touchdown. If I was detected on the way down there is no evidence of it yet. I’m going to keep talking as I go. This broadcast is being recorded on my deep spacer up above me in planetary orbit. So no matter what happens to me there is going to be a record kept. I’m not going to do an incompetent job like Marcill.”
He didn’t regret saying it, putting his feelings about the dead man in the record. If Marcill had taken any precautions at all he might still be alive. But precautions or no the fool should have found a way to leave some message. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing to indicate what had happened, not a single word that might have helped him now. Hartig snorted through his nostrils at the thought. Landing on a new planet was a danger every time, no matter how peaceful it looked. And this one, Selm-II, was certainly no different. Far from peaceful looking. It had been Marcill’s first assignment. And his last. The man had reported in from planetary orbit and had recorded his proposed landing position on the surface. And nothing else after that. A fool. He had never been heard from again. That was when the decision had been made to call a specialist in. This was Hartig’s seventeenth planet contact. He intended to use all of his experience to see to it that it wasn’t his last as well.
“I can see why Marcill picked this spot. There’s nothing but grass, empty plain stretching out in all directions. But right here, next to this landing site, there has been a battle and not too long ago either. The remains of the fighting are just in front of me. There appear to be war machines of various kinds, pretty impressive things at one time, but all of them blasted apart and rusting now. I’m going to take a closer look at them.”
Hartig sealed the lock and started warily towards the littered battlefield, reporting as he went. “These machines are big, the nearest one to me must be at least fifty yards long. It has tractor treads and is mounted with a single turret with a large gun. That’s destroyed now. No identification visible from this distance. I’m going to take a closer look at it. But I can tell you frankly that I don’t like this. There were no cities visible from space, no broadcasts or transmissions on any of the communication bands. Yet here is this battlefield and these wrecks. And they’re not toys. These things are the products of a very advanced technology. Nor are they any kind of illusion. This thing is solid metal and it has been blown open by something even solider. Still no insignia or identification anywhere on it that I can see. I’m going to take a look inside. There are no hatches visible from where I’m standing, but there is a hole blown in the side big enough to drive a truck through. I’m going through it now. There may be documents inside, certainly ought to be labels of some kind on the controls …”
Hartig stopped, frozen, one gloved hand clutching the jagged rim of metal around the opening. Had he heard something? With careful motions he raised the gain on his external microphone. But all he could hear now was the wind sighing through the metal skeletons. Nothing else. He listened for awhile, then shrugged and turned to climb through the gaping wound into the machine.
With startling suddenness a distant mechanical clanking echoed from the metal corpses of the battlefield. Hartig turned and dropped, his gun pointing and ready.
“There’s something out there, moving. Can’t see it yet but I can hear it clearly enough. I’ve switched the external mike to this circuit so the sound will be recorded too. It’s getting louder, wheels, treads maybe, squeaking and clanking. A machine … there!”
With a crash of metal against metal the thing appeared from among the ruined machines. It was smaller than most of the others, no more than five yards long, and hurtled along with frightening speed. Smoothly black and sinister. Hartig raised his gun, then eased his finger from the trigger when he saw that it was turning away from him. Twisting about and accelerating at the same time.
“It’s heading towards my landing ship! It may have detected it when I sat down. Found it by radiation, radar, something. I’m using my remote unit to set all the defences aboard. As soon as that thing gets within range it will be blasted … there!”
Explosion after explosion sounded as the rapid-fire guns aboard the lifeship poured out their deadly fire. The ground shook and fragments of rock and dirt where hurled into the air. The guns stopped and in an instant began firing again as the machine emerged from the dust. Apparently unharmed.
“That thing is fast and tough, but the primaries will get it.”
An even greater explosion shook the ground, clanging through the metal walls around him; a shower of red dust floated down. Hartig stared out, frozen, then began talking again in a toneless voice.
“That was my ship going up. It took just a single shot from that damned thing. Our guns couldn’t touch it. Now it’s turning in this direction. It must be tracking my radio signal, heat radiation, something. No point in turning the radio off now. It’s coming this way straight at me. I’m shooting now but it doesn’t seem to affect it. I can’t see any ports or windows facing this way. The crew must see by TV relay. I’m trying to shoot out some protrusions on the thing’s front. They may be pickups. Instrumentation of some kind. Doesn’t seem to slow it down “
The sound of the explosion terminated abruptly as the radio broadcast ended. In orbit, high above, the control centre in the deep spacer began to search automatically for the radio signal, but without any success. Then it tried all of the other broadcast channels. There was nothing. With mechanical tenacity it started over once again and searched with maximum gain, but detected nothing other than atmospherics. After one hour it repeated the search, and every hour after that for the next twenty-four. When this part of the program had been completed it turned on the FTL radio as it had been instructed and sent out the broadcast it had recorded from the man on the ground. When this had been accomplished it would down the power on all of its circuits to minimum maintenance, then wait with infinite patience for its next command.
2: The Smell of Death
“What is it? Wha t’s wrong?” Lea asked. Her shoulder had felt the sudden tensing of Brion’s body where it touched him. They were lying back on the deep lounge, completely relaxed, gazing out of the viewing port at the star-filled darkness of interstellar space. His great arm was about her thin body and she was very aware of its sudden rigidity.
“Nothing is wrong, nothing at all. Will you look at those colours …”
“Listen, you darling big slab of muscle, you may be the best weightlifter in the galaxy but you are also the worst liar. Something has happened. Something I don’t know about.”
Brion hesitated a moment, then nodded. “There’s someone close by, someone who hasn’t been here before. Someone bringing trouble.”
“I believe in your empathetic abilities, I’ve seen them at work. So I know that you can sense other peoples emotions. But we’re in deep space, moving between two suns light years apart so how can there be anyone new aboard this ship …” She stopped and looked suddenly out at the stars. “A drop sphere, of course. This must be a rendezvous, not just a normal orientation. Is there another FTL ship out there? With someone transferring from it in a drop sphere?”
“Not coming already arrived. He’s on board now. And he’s coming this way, towards us. I don’t like anything about this. I don’t like the man or the message that he is bringing.”
With a single flowing motion Brion was on his feet, facing about, fists clenched. Although he was well over six feet tall and weighed nearly three-hundred pounds, he moved like a cat. Lea looked up at the solid mass of him towering over her and could almost feel the tension herself.
“You can’t be sure,” she said quietly. “Undoubtedly you are right about someone coming aboard. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that it has anything to do with us.
“One man dead, two men perhaps. And this one who is coming, he smells of death himself. He’s here now.”
Lea gasped as she heard the lounge door sliding open behind her. She looked over her shoulder fearfully, staring at the opening, not knowing what to expect. There was the shuffle of a soft footstep, then a thud. Shuffle, thud. Closer and louder. Then a man appeared in the open doorway, hesitated there as he looked about, blinking as though he had trouble seeing. It took a decided effort for Lea to conceal her instant feeling of repulsion; she had to force herself not to look away. The man’s single eye moved slowly past her to fix on Brion, Then he started forward again, his twisted foot dragging, the crutch coming down heavily with each step. Whatever force had injured his legs must have also torn away the right side of his face. It was bright pink where a new growth of skin; a patch covered the empty eye socket. His right arm was also missing, but an arm bud had been grafted to his clavicle and within a year he would have a complete, new arm. But right now it was only partly grown, a baby’s arm only about a foot long that dangled helplessly from his shoulder. He limped close, slight and twisted, to stand before Brion’s hulking form.
“I’m Carver,” he said, his name a frightful parody of his condition. “I’m here to see you, Brandd.”
“I know.” The tension drained from Brion’s body as suddenly as it had appeared. “Sit down and rest.”
Lea could not stop herself from moving aside as Carver dropped, sighing, onto the lounge beside her. She could hear his heavy breathing, see the perspiration standing out on his skin as he fumbled a capsule from his pocket and put it into his mouth. He looked sideways at her and nodded. “Doctor Lea Morees,” he said. “They want you too.”
“Culrel?” Brion asked. Carver nodded.
“The Cultural Relationships Foundation. I understand you have worked with us before?”
“We did. It was an emergency …”
“It’s always an emergency. Something very important has come up. I was sent to see you.”
“Why us? We’ve just come from a hell-hole of a planet named Dis. Lea has been ill. We were promised some more time before we would be contacted. We agreed to work for your people again, but not right now …”
“I told you it’s always an emergency.” Carver’s voice was hoarse and he pressed his good hand between his knees to stop the trembling. It was pain or fatigue or both and he was not giving in to it. “I’ve just come from another one of these emergencies, as you can see, or I would be going myself. If it makes you feel any better I know what happened to you both on Dis so I offered to take care of this one myself. They laughed at me. I don’t think it was very funny. Are you both ready now?” He turned to face Brion as he said it.
“You can’t force Lea to go, not now. I’ll take care of it myself.” Carver shook his head.
“You’re to go as a team, the orders were specific about that. Shared talents, a synergistic union.
“I’m going with Brion,” Dea said. I’m feeling much better. By the time we get wherever we’re going I’ll be back to normal.”
“That’s very pleasing to hear. As you know we are a fully voluntary organization.” He ignored Brion’s snort of derision as he struggled a flat plastic box from the pocket of his tunic. “As I am sure you are aware, almost all of our assignments deal only with cultures that are in trouble, societies on planets that have been cut off from the mainstream of human contact for thousands of years. We don’t go near newly rediscovered planets that’s the job of Planetary Survey. They go in first, then turn their records over to us. They’re a rough outfit, I did four years with Plansurv before I transferred to Culrel.”
He smiled grimly. “I thought this new job would be easier. Plansurv has a problem and they have asked us for help. In cases like this we always say yes. Are you ready to look at these records now?”
“I’ll get a viewer from our cabin,” Brion said.
Carver nodded wearily, too tired to speak.
“Would you like me to order you something?” Lea asked as Brion went out of the lounge.
“Yes, thank you, a drink of some kind. I’ll wash down a pill with it feel better in a few minutes. But no alcohol, I can’t take any of that yet.”
She felt his eyes on her as she phoned passenger control and gave her order to the computer. When she had finished the call she put back the phone and turned sharply to face him.
“Well do you like what you see?”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. But I read your history in the records. I never met anyone from Earth before.”
“What did you expect two heads?”
“I said that I was sorry. Before I left my home world and went into space I really believed that the whole story of Earth was just another religious myth.”
“Well, now you can see for yourself that we are real undernourished flesh and blood. Underfed citizens of an overcrowded and worn out planet. Probably just what we deserve, I imagine you would say.”
“No. I might have at one time. No more. I’m sure that the Earth Empire was guilty of a number of excesses, just the sort of thing we read about in our school books. No one’s in doubt about that. But all of that’s just history now, ancient history thousands of years in the past. What is of much greater importance to me is the fate of all the planets that were cut off after the Breakdown. It wasn’t until I saw for myself what had happened to some of them that I knew what an unyielding and harsh universe it could be. Mankind basically belongs only on Earth. You may feel personally inferior because the overcrowding and limited resources have caused an overall reduction in your size. But you belong on Earth and are a product of Earth. A number of us may appear larger or stronger than you but this is because we have been forced to adapt to some cruel and violent worlds. I’ve become used to that I even accept it as the norm. It wasn’t until I saw you that I realized that the home of mankind was still a reality.” He smiled a crooked grin.
“Please don’t think me foolish for saying this,” he said, “but I experienced a sensation of both pleasure and relief when I met you. Like a child discovering his long-lost parents. I’m afraid I’m not saying this very well. It’s like coming home after a long voyage. I have seen the way mankind has adapted to a score of planets. Meeting you is, in a funny way a reassuring bit of knowledge. Our home is still there. I am very happy to meet you.”
