The Earth Gods Are Coming (4 page)

Lieutenant Bergquist lifted the three-tined, beryl-dural fish spear up from the water. The fat, silver-scaled fish that was firmly pronged on the spear wallowed, plopped, flapped strongly. Inglis, propped against the wrecked chart table, brought the fire axe down on the fish, decapitated it with one blow. Hannah, the muscular quartermaster, removed the fish and began to scale and degut it, throwing the remains onto the bait pile.

Inglis looked over the side at Lieutenant Bergquist. She stared back at him for a moment, her dark hair cropped, her face tanned, the whiteness of her bosom startling against the blue water, then, with a flashing glimpse of pink skin and two slim legs, she dived again.

"Another one should be enough for dinner, Roy," Hannah said, using her knife with a delicate precision. "Don't want to tire Gerda."

"Tire Gerda?" said Sammy, the detector screen tech, looking up from the tiny fire blossoming in the hearth fashioned from what had once been the steel cup for the celestial globe. "She's like a fish herself—or a mermaid."

There were ten of them afloat in what had once been the control section of a Solarian light cruiser, whose name had been
Swallow.
Four men, five girls—and a woman who was dying under the cover of what clothing and fabric they had been able to make into a tent. Lieutenant Carmelli—or Belita; they were all now, on Inglis' orders on first name terms—had had her chest caved in as the control sections, cut free from the main hull and lowered at above regulation escape speed on emergency anti gravs, had struck the water. The rest of them were just going through the yellow phase on their bruises and contusions, and Anton, a young talker, was strapped up with a broken arm. How the rest of the ship, where the enemy fire had struck full, had fared they did not know.

All they did know was that Roy Inglis was driving them on under a sail patched from clothing, fabric, dust covers, charts, anything that could be stitched into one main square sail and a tiny jib—on towards the east and the point on the surface of this planet that had once been spotted under hair fine wires and photographed.

The control cabin floated well. The rear bulkhead had been sheared by the freeing explosive bolts so that it faired into some sort of streamlined stern over which an oar serving as rudder had been hung. The oar had been made from conduit piping and a few loose plates. It steered; for which mercy Inglis was profoundly thankful.

He was worried about a forward observation port below water level. The packing had worked loose and a small leak had continually to be kept under observation and the water under the control room floor—now the bilges—to be bailed at regular intervals. Thankfully, the weather was mild, with a kindly sun and a fair breeze. Water was being condensed out in a worm gear contrived by the techs with the aid of burning glasses taken from the optical instruments. Fish was a staple diet. The fire was kept alight using fish refuse, dried, human excreta, a few meagre wooden chippings and plastic trimmings. The techs were working on a cooking plate heated by burning lenses; so far they'd scorched the part of the fish on the plate and left the rest raw.

"Raw fish," Inglis had said, jocularly, "keeps you fit. The phosphorous goes to your brains—so you'll all be grade A geniuses when we hit Earth."

Linda, who had thought it fun when she had donated her shirt and slip to the sail, and who possessed a figure that ensured she would be among the first to be asked to donate the rest of her clothing if that should be necessary, had quickly tired of the expedition, and had fretfully replied that there was no real use in trying to sail to find Commander Varese and the whaler and that they might as well give up now.

Inglis had been kind but firm with her. She was a communications tech, under Gerda's orders, and he wanted her in good trim when they met up with Varese. He didn't like to think what might happen if they missed Varese.

The thought of spending the rest of his life marooned on this planet apalled him.
Isabella
had told him that the planet was a hodgepodge of interlinked seas and lakes, wide rivers and steeply wooded mountains, around the northern temperate belt, where they now were. The rest was sheathed in ice to the north pole, baking desert along the equatorial belt, and more ice down to the south pole. In this belt where they now were, on the globe just under Earth size and mass, with an atmosphere that was a joy to breathe, they must find all that could possibly help them. Of these possible succors, the only one that, for the moment, occupied Inglis, was finding Varese and the whaler. After that, if all went well, they could search for what remained of the ship.

Gerda popped up again with another fish. When she followed the fish into the boat—Inglis supposed he would have to think of the floating, sail-equipped control room as that from now on—he looked at her with a frank interest that he was not unpleasantly unaware was reciprocated. She was certainly lovely. She didn't bother to dry herself but pulled on her three scraps of cloth, letting the sun take care of that.

Standing there, gripping part of the jagged edge of what was left of the hull above him—it had ripped off, of course, in their descent in protecting them against the heat and buffeting and general unpleasantness of that experience—he stared ahead at the bar line of the horizon. The action was quite automatic now, after a week's sailing. A week, that was of Earthly time, as shown by his wrist watch which had survived. The planet possessed a twenty-one and a half hour day and night cycle and, for ordinary shipboard purposes, they reckoned by that. But Inglis was thinking in terms of rescue and astronomical standards; and so he used Terran time to calculate out their sailing progress.

The horizon was empty, deserted. No land. He grunted slightly, despite his own re-iterated caution a little disappointed, and climbed down into the well of the ship. Gerda was arguing with Sammy.

"There's been no danger in swimming so far, Sammy."

"But that doesn't mean there won't be. We fling the bait over, attract the fish, and spear them. I'm worried that one day we'll attract the equivalent of a shark."

"Okay, Sammy," Inglis interrupted, forcing his smile. "The next time anyone goes fishing, you can perch in the maintop with a rifle. Okay?"

"Sure, Roy. Glad to. I'd kinda like to keep Gerda and Linda in one piece. The pieces are so nice."

Sammy was well built, possessed of a shock of fair hair, and with a nose that had evidently lost an argument with a brick wall at some time in a hectic past. Inglis laughed; not altogether relishing the observation, and swung on Gerda.

"Going to have some more fun with the radios, Gerda?"

She tried to keep the conversation on the light and flippant plane it had begun on under the cunning nudges of Inglis. "Sure, Roy. I'll have another try." But the flat despondency in her voice choked Inglis. Here they all were, marooned, living on what was left of the emergency rations, soon going to have to survive on an unrelieved fish diet, battered, bruised and sore, sailing a crazy control cabin boat under a clothing sail in a gallant but pitiful attempt to find —well, what was it they hoped to find?

Commander Varese and the whaler were such slender hopes. The communications equipment aboard the whaler might, just might when tied in with what had survived in the control cabin, suffice to build a subspace radio and so call up the base. But the hope was so slight as to serve merely as a waking dream, a mirage that gave them the excuse for carrying out orders Inglis gave. Gerda wiped her hands down her trunks and squatted before the covered area where the radio components were laid out. It looked like a shrine, with offerings spread before the altar of a barbarian idol.

Gerda began her ritual. She was a first class communications officer, that was clear. But how could even the greatest genius rebuild a shattered subspace radio when so many of the components had been wrecked? She went about her task methodically. At the moment she was refurbishing a gaggle of transistors that had been cruelly mishandled. Inglis called Linda over to help. He ignored the sway of her hips as she stepped across the decking avoiding the bundles and wrecked stanchions that had once supported spaceship equipment. Let her be as good at reconstructing a subspace radio as she was at attracting men, and Inglis would have a lot more time for her.

Inglis looked again at his watch. Time to relieve Lieutenant Commander M'Banga, the gunnery officer, at the rudder.

He walked aft, letting his body go with the sway of the vessel. Sea sickness had been minor; spacemen could handle that well enough, and now he along with others might have found enjoyment in this yachting trip if the stakes had not been so terrifying. M'Banga met him with a wide smile.

"Right on time, Roy. But I'll carry on a while, if you wish."

M'Banga was thinking of Lieutenant Ranee Zutshi, a slight, raven-haired woman with the liquid eyes and delicate grace of an exotic bird. Now she was asleep. Inglis had put her in charge of the medical supplies, a task that consisted in the main of sorting out the salvable items from the first aid chest, of easing Anton and his broken arm, and of making the encroaching death of Belita as painless and full of dignity as possible.

A hard task for a slender, delicate woman, but one which the women of Earth had from times long past accepted and performed with humility and courage.

"Thanks, M'Banga," Inglis said, returning the smile. "That's good of you." M'Banga was his main strength aboard. With him and Gerda he could feel no qualms, no possible failures. Hannah, the long-service quartermaster, too, would be a strength to him in potential danger; but she lacked something of the imagination of the others which, despite its train of terrors, yet lifted their courage and loyalty onto a different plane. Of the others, he had reserved judgement. When the going got tough, as it assuredly would, then would be the time to seek your friends, and watch your back.

"Anyway," said M'Banga, "She steers like a mule."

"You mean," piped the impudent voice of Toni Frescobaldi, squatting on the decking alongside the shining, dominating figure of M'Banga, "that she doesn't like being steered by one."

"Mutinous imp!" growled M'Banga, pretending to cuff Toni. She dodged, glancing a look up at him from her dark eyes. She was barely seventeen, skinny as a boy, moving with the jerky abandon of a marionette, and yet containing the promise of a lush beauty that would put even Linda's charms in the shade. Now Toni glanced up at M'Banga and naked hero worship showed in her face and eyes. Inglis smiled, mentally docketting Toni on what he called the stern-quarters list.

"For a cadet spaceman you've aimed at a big target, Toni," he said mildly. For her he felt badly; her first trip into space wearing the brand new insignia of space cadet and she was pitchforked onto a watery world parsecs beyond the end of the explored Galaxy with only a slender chance of survival. Inglis checked himself. He was marooned on that back-of-beyond world, too; and he was responsible for the others. He could not admit defeat; not even in mental sorrow for another. And, anyway, sorrow was a word with which most of those aboard didn't want to make acquaintance.

He turned from M'Banga and Toni to stare the length of his command. They were all there, busy about the tasks to which he had set them. Linda had gone to see Belita; and that was a sad note among the enforced gaiety. Belita wouldn't last another day, not even the short day on ... on whatever name this place might one day claim.

i Standing like that, the sun burning down, the wind whipping the patchwork sail in cracking protests against the conduit piping yard, braced by intercom wiring, with the salt scents of the sea strong on him, letting his body go with the motion of the waves, Inglis saw a chip of white gleam vagrantly on the horizon bar line, glimmer and vanish.

The words, "Sail hoi" were on his tongue, when he firmed his lips down. A little test of morale, of observation. He turned to M'Banga, who was skylarking with Toni.

"M'Banga. Wait to see who yells, will you?"

"What's that, Roy?" And then M'Banga cottoned on. "Who's on lookout?"

Inglis knew; he stared the length of the craft.

Linda had left Gerda at the shrine of the radio idol, to minister to Belita. Hannah was fussing—no, that wasn't so, Hannah never fussed—Hannah was superintending the midday cooking at the quondam celestial globe support. M'Banga was at the helm, with Toni doing a spot of hero worshiping. Anton with his broken arm was asleep amidships, along with Ranee, and the dying Belita. That left himself, as captain making his rounds—and Sammy.

After leering at Gerda when she had climbed aboard from her fishing trip, Sammy had rehoisted the sail at the conclusion of his watch; now he should be on lookout. Inglis sought the shock of fair hair in the bow of the craft. Well. Sammy was making a show of doing his job. The problem was that he was used to seeking for the traces of other ships in flecks of light on detector screens, not across a desolate waste of water bounded by a horizon over which a sail would put in a momentary appearance only to vanish frustratingly and unpredictably.

The scrap of white shone again.

"I see her," M'Banga said quietly. He shook his head at Toni. "Quiet, imp. Roy's planning something."

"Those photographs we saw," Inglis said. He thought of the blown up prints Lieutenant Chung had provided. "The capsule was dropped with Abdul aboard onto a floating city. There were clear evidences of a culture centered on the ship. But it is also clear that that ship we've just seen is not from the city we're aiming at. A long way to go to there."

"Well, Roy," said M'Banga, "friendly or otherwise, we're in no shape to outrun her. That's for sure."

The white chip gleamed again, longer, held before vanishing.

"Contact!" yelled Sammy, pointing.

Everyone jumped up, except those asleep and dying. Inglis winked at M'Banga and Toni.

He walked slowly forward, trying to work out just what he wanted to do. He'd been hoping to meet someone in this wide and desolate sea; but now that seemed about to happen an odd quivering nervousness possessed him. Soft? Please God, not now!