CHAPTER 4

Five minutes later Calhoun had located one would-be killer behind a ma.s.s of splintered planking that once had been a wall. He set the wood afire by a blaster-bolt and then viciously sent other bolts all around the man it had sheltered when he fled from the flames. He could have killed him ten times over, but it was more desirable to open communication. So he missed, intentionally.

Maril had cried out that she came from Dara and had word for them, but they did not answer. There were three men with heavy-duty blast-rifles.

One was the one Calhoun had burned out of his hiding-place. That man's rifle exploded when the flames. .h.i.t it. Two remained. One--so Calhoun presently discovered--was working his way behind underbrush to a shelf from which he could shoot down at Calhoun. Calhoun had dropped into a hollow and pulled Maril to cover at the first shot. The second man happily planned to get to a point where he could shoot him like a fish in a barrel. The third man had fired half a dozen times and then disappeared. Calhoun estimated that he intended to get around to the rear, in hope there was no protection from that direction for Calhoun.

It would take some time for him to manage it.

So Calhoun industriously concentrated his fire on the man trying to get above him. He was behind a boulder, not too dissimilar to Calhoun's breastwork. Calhoun set fire to the brush at the point at which the other man aimed. That, then, made his effort useless. Then Calhoun sent a dozen bolts at the other man's rocky shield. It heated up. Steam rose in a whitish ma.s.s and blew directly away from Calhoun. He saw that antagonist flee. He saw him so clearly that he was positive that there was a patch of blue pigment on the right-hand side of the back of his neck.

He grunted and swung to find the third. That man moved through thick undergrowth, and Calhoun set it on fire in a neat pattern of spreading flames. Evidently, these men had had no training in battle-tactics with blast-rifles. The third man also had to get away. He did. But something from him arched through the smoke. It fell to the ground directly upwind from Calhoun. White smoke puffed up violently.

It was instinct that made Calhoun react as he did. He jerked the girl Maril to her feet and rushed her toward the Med Ship. Smoke from the flung bomb upwind barely swirled around him and missed Maril altogether.

Calhoun, though, got a whiff of something strange, not scorched or burning vegetation at all. He ceased to breathe and plunged onward. In clear air he emptied his lungs and refilled them. They were then halfway to the ship, with Murgatroyd prancing on ahead.

But then Calhoun's heart began to pound furiously. His muscles twitched and tense. He felt extraordinary symptoms like an extreme of agitation.

Calhoun was familiar enough with tear-gas, used by police on some planets. But this was different and worse. Even as he helped and urged Maril onward, he automatically considered his sensations, and had it.

Panic gas! Police did not use it because panic is worse than rioting.

Calhoun felt all the physical symptoms of fear and of gibbering terror.

A man whose mind yields to terror experiences certain physical sensations, wildly beating heart, tensed and twitching muscles, and a frantic impulse to convulsive action. A man in whom those physical sensations are induced by other means will--ordinarily--find his mind yielding to terror.

Calhoun couldn't combat his feelings, but his clinical att.i.tude enabled him to act despite them. The three from Weald reached the base of the Med Ship. One of their enemies had lost his rifle and need not be counted. Another had fled from flames and might be ignored for some moments, anyhow. But a blast-bolt struck the ship's metal hull only feet from Calhoun, and he whipped around to the other side and let loose a staccato of fire which emptied the rifle of all its charges.

Then he opened the airlock door, hating the fact that he shook and trembled. He urged the girl and Murgatroyd in. He slammed the outer airlock door just as another blaster-bolt hit.

"They--they don't realize," said Maril desperately. "If they only knew--."

"Talk to them, if you like," said Calhoun. His teeth chattered and he raged, because the symptom was of terror he denied.

He pushed a b.u.t.ton on the control-board. He pointed to a microphone. He got at an oxygen-bottle and inhaled deeply. Oxygen, obviously, should be an antidote for panic, since the symptoms of terror act to increase the oxygenation of the blood-stream and muscles, and to make superhuman exertion possible if necessary. Breathing ninety-five per cent oxygen produced the effect the terror-inspiring gas strove for, so his heart slowed nearly to normal and his body relaxed. He held out his hand and it did not tremble.

He turned to Maril. She hadn't spoken into the mike yet.

"They--may not be from Dara!" she said shakily. "I just thought! They could be somebody else--maybe criminals who planned to raid the mine for a shipload of its ore ..."

"Nonsense!" said Calhoun. "I saw one of them clearly enough to be sure.

But they're skeptical characters. I'm afraid there may be more on the way here wherever they keep themselves. Anyhow, now we know some of them are in hearing! I'll take advantage of that and we'll go on."

He took the microphone. Instants later his voice boomed in the stillness outside the ship, cutting through the thin shrill of invisible small creatures.

"This is the Med Ship Aesclipus Twenty," said Calhoun's voice, amplified to a shout. "I left Weald four days ago, one day after the cargo-ship from here arrived with everybody on board dead. On Weald they don't know how it happened, but they suspect blueskins. Sooner or later they'll search here. Get away! Cover up your tracks! Hide all signs that you've ever been here! Get the h.e.l.l away, fast! One more warning! There's talk of fusion-bombing Dara. They're scared! If they find your traces, they'll be more scared still! So cover up your tracks and--get--away--from--here!"

The many-times-multiplied voice rolled and echoed among the hills. But it was very clear. Where it could be heard it could be understood, and it could be heard for miles.

But there was no response to it. Calhoun waited a reasonable time. Then he shrugged and seated himself at the control-board.

"It isn't easy," he observed, "to persuade desperate men that they've out-smarted themselves! Hold hard, Murgatroyd!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The rockets bellowed. Then there was a tremendous noise to end all noises, and the ship began to climb. It sped up and up and up. By the time it was out of atmosphere it had velocity enough to coast to clear s.p.a.ce and Calhoun cut the rockets altogether. He busied himself with those astrogational ch.o.r.es which began with orienting oneself to galactic directions after leaving a planet which rotates at its own individual speed. Then one computes the overdrive course to another planet, from the respective coordinates of the world one is leaving and the one one aims for. Then,--in this case at any rate--there was the very finicky task of picking out a fourth-magnitude star of whose planets one was his destination. He aimed for it with ultra-fine precision.

"Overdrive coming," he said presently. "Hold on!"

s.p.a.ce reeled. There was nausea and giddiness and a horrible sensation of falling in a wildly unlikely spiral. Then stillness, and solidity, and the blackness of the Pit outside the Med Ship. The little craft was in overdrive again.

After a long while, the girl Maril said uneasily.

"I don't know what you plan now--."

"I'm going to Dara," said Calhoun. "On Orede I tried to get the blueskins there to get going, fast. Maybe I succeeded. I don't know. But this thing's been mishandled! Even if there's a famine, people shouldn't do things out of desperation!"

"I know now that I was--very foolish--."

"Forget it," commanded Calhoun. "I wasn't talking about you. Here I run into a situation that the Med Service should have caught and cleaned up generations ago! But it's not only a Med Service obligation, it's a current mess! Before I could begin to get at the basic problem, those idiots on Orede--. It'd happened before I reached Weald! An emotional explosion triggered by a ship full of dead men that n.o.body intended to kill."

Maril shook her head.

"Those Darian characters," said Calhoun annoyedly, "shouldn't have gone to Orede in the first place. If they went there, they should at least have stayed on a continent where there were no people from Weald digging a mine and hunting cattle for sport on their off days! They could be spotted! I believe they were! And again, if it had been a long way from the mine installation, they could probably have wiped out the people who sighted them before they could get back with the news! But it looks like miners saw men hunting, and got close enough to see they were blueskins, and then got back to the mine with the news!"

She waited for him to explain.

"I know I'm guessing, but it fits!" he said distastefully. "So something had to be done. Either the mining settlement had to be wiped out or the story that blueskins were on Orede had to be discredited. The blueskins tried for both. They used panic-gas on a herd of cattle and it made them crazy and they charged the settlement like the four-footed lunatics they are! And the blueskins used panic-gas on the settlement itself as the cattle went through. It should have settled the whole business nicely.

After it was over every man in the settlement would believe he'd been out of his head for a while, and he'd have the crazy state of the settlement to think about, and he wouldn't be sure of what he'd seen or heard beforehand. They might try to verify the blueskin story later, but they wouldn't believe anything certainly! It should have worked!"

Again she waited. So Calhoun said very wrily indeed;

"Unfortunately, when the miners panicked, they stampeded into the ship.

Also unfortunately, panic-gas got into the ship with them. So they stayed panicked while the astrogator--in panic!--took off and headed for Weald and threw on the overdrive--which would be set for Weald anyhow--because that would be the fastest way to run away from whatever he imagined he feared. But he and all the men on the ship were still crazy with panic from the gas they were re-breathing until they died!"

Silence. After a long interval, Maril asked;

"You don't think the--Darians intended to kill?"

"I think they were stupid!" said Calhoun angrily. "Somebody's always urging the police to use panic-gas in case of public tumult. But it's too dangerous. n.o.body knows what one man will do in a panic. Take a hundred or two or three and panic them all, and there's no limit to their craziness! The whole thing was handled wrong!"

"But you don't blame them?"

"For being stupid, yes," said Calhoun fretfully. "But if I'd been in their place, perhaps ..."

"Where were you born?" asked Maril suddenly.

Calhoun jerked his head around. He said;