Read Ebook: Nomad by Smith George O George Oliver Orban Paul Illustrator

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Ebook has 2518 lines and 84514 words, and 51 pages

"No, I guess not. Must be worse than death not to have a mind."

"What's worse is what happens. You haven't a mind--and yet you have enough mind to realize that fact. Strange psychological tangle, but there it is. Tough as it is, we've got to go through with it."

"Probably. That's why we're taking out after them. It's the only reason why Guy Maynard was covered under the TSI order."

"Too bad," said the pilot.

"It is," agreed Williamson. "But--prepare for action. Check all ordnance."

"Certain identification?"

"Only one chance. They probably didn't staff it too well. On an abortive attempt like this, they'd put only those men they could afford to lose aboard. Probably a skeleton crew. Also the knowledge that detection meant extermination, therefore go fast and light and as frugal as possible on crewmen. That's our one chance."

"Right," said Ben. "What's our velocity with respect to theirs?"

"Forty miles per second."

"Giving them the whole thing at once?"

"Yes. And one thing more, Jimmy?"

"Technician to executive," answered Jimmy. "I'm here."

"Can you rig your drive-pattern interferer?"

"In about a minute. I've been setting up the constants from the cardex file."

"And hoping they've not been changed?" asked Ben with a smile.

"Right."

His shout was not soon enough. On the turret of the Martian ship there appeared two spots of light that were just above the threshold of vision against the black sky. The destroyer bucked dangerously, and the acceleration fell sharply.

"Hulled us."

On the pilot's panel there appeared a number of winking pilot lights. "We'll get along," said he, studying the lights and interpreting their warning.

"Can we catch him for another shot?" asked Ben pleadingly.

"Not a chance," answered Pete. "We're out of this fight."

"No, we're not," said Ben. "Look!"

"Thirty."

"There goes number two--a clean miss," swore Ben.

"Number one did a fine job."

"I know but--"

"This'll polish 'em off," came Jimmy's voice. "Here goes the drive scrambler."

"Hey! No--!" started Ben, but the whining of the generators and the dimming of the lights told him he was too late.

"No reprimand, Jimmy," said Ben Williamson soberly. "I did hope to recover Guy's body."

Thomakein, the Ertinian, stopped the recorder as the Terran ship reversed itself painfully and began to decelerate for the trip back to home. He nodded to himself and made a verbal addition to the recording, stating that the smaller ship had been satisfied as to the destruction of the larger, otherwise a continuance of the fight would have been inevitable. Then Thomakein placed the recording in a can and placed it on a shelf containing other recordings. He forgot about it then, for there was something more interesting in view.

That derelict warship would be a veritable mine of information about the culture of this system. All warships are gold mines of information concerning the technical abilities, the culture, the beliefs, and the people themselves.

Could he assume the destruction of the crew in the derelict?

The smaller ship had--unless they were out of the battle and forced to withdraw due to lack of fighting contact. That didn't seem right to Thomakein. For the smaller ship to attack the larger ship meant a dogged determination. There would have been a last-try stand on the part of the smaller ship no matter how much faster the larger ship were. At worst, the determination seemed to indicate that ramming the larger ship was not out of order.

But the smaller ship had not rammed the larger. Hadn't even tried. In fact, the smaller ship had turned and started to decelerate as soon as the larger ship had doubled her speed.

Thomakein couldn't read either of the name plates of the two fighting ships. He had no idea as to the origin of the two. As an Ertinian, Thomakein couldn't even recognize the characters let alone read them. He was forced to go once more on deduction.

The course of the larger vessel. It was obviously fleeing from the smaller ship. Thomakein played with his computer for a bit and came to two possibilities, one of which was remote, the other pointing to the fourth planet.

A carefully collected table of masses and other physical constants of the planets of Sol was consulted.

Thomakein retrieved his recording, set it up and added:

"The smaller ship, noticing the increased acceleration of the larger, assumed--probably--that the larger ship's crew was killed by the increased gravity-apparent. Since the larger ship was fleeing, it would in all probability have used every bit of acceleration that the crew could stand. Its course was dead-center for the fourth planet's position if integrated for a course based on the larger ship's velocity and direction and acceleration at and prior to the engagement.

"This fourth planet has a surface gravity of approximately one-eighth of the acceleration of the larger ship. Doubling this means that the crew must withstand sixteen gravities. The chances of any being of intelligent size withstanding sixteen gravities is of course depending upon an infinite number of factors. However, the probable reasoning of the smaller ship is that sixteen gravities will kill the crew of the larger ship. Otherwise they would have continued to try to do battle with the larger ship. Their return indicates that they were satisfied."

At the end of that hour, Thomakein noted that nothing had registered and he smiled with assurance.

He stretched and said to himself: "I can stand under four gravities. I can live under twelve with the standard Ertinian acceleration garb. But sixteen gravities for one hour? Never."

Thomakein noted the acceleration of the derelict as being slightly over six gravities on his own accelerometer, which registered the Ertinian constant.

Then he began to maneuver his little ship toward the derelict.

The insides were a mess. Broken girders and ruined equipment made a bad tangle of the lower third of the great warship. Thomakein jockeyed the little ship back and forth inside of the derelict until he had lodged it against the remainder of a lower deck in such a manner as to keep it there under the six Terran gravities of acceleration. Then he donned spacesuit and started to prowl the ship. It was painful and heavy going, but Thomakein made it slowly.

An hour later, Thomakein heard the ringing of alarms, coming from somewhere up above, and the sound made him stop suddenly. Sound, he reasoned, requires air for propagation. The sound came through the floor, but somewhere there must be air inside of the derelict.

So upward he went through the damage. He found an air-tight door and fought the catch until it puffed open, nearly throwing him back into the damaged opening. White-faced, Thomakein held on until his breath returned, and then with a determined look at the gap below--and the place where he would have been if he had fallen out of the derelict--Thomakein tried the door again. He closed the outer door and tried the inner.

His alien grasp of mechanics was not universal enough to discover his trouble immediately. But it was logical, and logic told him to look for the air vent. He found it, and turned the valve permitting air to enter the air-tight door system. The inner door opened easily and Thomakein entered a portion of the hull where the alarm bells rang loud and clear.

He found them ringing in a room filled with control instruments. Throwing the dome of his suit back over his head, Thomakein looked around him with interest. There was nothing in the room that logic or a grasp of elementary mechanics could solve. It did Thomakein no good to look at the Martian characters that labeled the instruments and dials, for he recognized nothing of any part of the Solar System.

He did recognize the bloody lump of inert flesh as having once been the operator of this room--or one of them he came to conclude as his search found others.

Thomakein was not squeamish. But they did litter up the place and the pools of blood made the floor slippery which was dangerous under 6-G Terran--or for Thomakein, five point six eight. So Thomakein struggled with the Martian bodies and hauled them to the corridor where he let them drop over the edge of the central well onto the bulkhead below. He returned to the instrument room in an attempt to find out what the bell-ringing could mean.

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