54

“It's Badger and his men,” one of the engineers remarked, reading the terse information that flowed to the TV screen from all parts of the ship. “He's killed the guard.”

“Damn it!” Captain Hoban said. “Can you see what they're doing now?”

“They've just entered the pod.”

“Seal the ports!” Hoban ordered.

“Too late. They've already opened them.”

“Close them again!”

The engineer punched buttons then shook his head. “They've locked them into place. They're blasting off.”

Hoban watched on the screen as a schematic came up, showing the Dolomite's landing pod lifting out of its bay and maneuvering away from the ship's side.

“I can still pull them back with the short-range tractors,” the engineer said, his fingers poised on the controls.

Captain Hoban hesitated. At this range, he knew that the tractors would pull the pod apart. Badger and the others wouldn't stand a chance. He didn't want to go that far. There would be a court of inquiry over this. He needed to keep his record clean.

“Book their departure in the ship's log,” he ordered.

“I don't know that they'll make it,” the engineering officer said. “The weather's really bad out there.”

Hoban looked and saw that an entire weather front had moved in while they were dealing with Badger. Long ragged clouds covered the planet's surface, clouds that were whipped and torn apart by the wind's violent action. Lightning flashed, huge jagged blue-violet bolts, several miles long, lancing out of the black-bellied clouds into the naked land below. Although the Dolomite was well above it, Hoban gave an involuntary shudder at the size of the storm.

“Try Dr. Myakovsky again,” he ordered. “We have to warn him.”

“I'm trying, sir,” the officer said. “But no luck so far.”

55

“I'm getting something”, Gill reported.

“Thank God,” said Julie.

“Is it Hoban?” Stan asked.

“Yes, I think it is.”

Stan swung around in his big command chair and took the microphone from Gill's hand. “Hoban? What's going on there?”

“Sorry for the delay in transmission, sir,” Hoban said, his voice echoing eerily around the lander's cabin. “We've had a revolt on-board. It's in hand now, but a group of crewmen have seized a pod and are on their way to the surface.”

“Nothing much they can do to us,” Stan said. “Listen, Captain, something really important has happened here. We've lost Norbert.”

“Your robot alien? I'm sorry to hear it, sir, though I was never that fond of him.”

“At least he died doing what he was built to do,” Stan said.

“What about the dog?” Hoban asked.

“Yes, the dog's gone, too,” Stan said brusquely. “Why is everyone so upset about the dog? The dog's not important. We've got troubles of our own.”

There was no reaction to that. Stan cleared his throat and wondered how soon he could take another ampoule. Then he brought his attention back to present matters.

“Captain Hoban, we've found what we were looking for. The beekeepers have done our job for us. Norbert took over a Bio-Pharm harvester ship. It's packed full of royal jelly. We're rich, Captain.”

“Yes, sir. If we can just get out of here now. Can you get up to our orbit?”

“Negative,” Stan said. “We're still in the lander, which is barely maneuverable in this weather. Taking shelter in the harvester is our best bet, but it's going to take some doing to get there.”

“Yes, sir,” Hoban said. “I copy.”

“Secondly, preliminary visual inspection shows the flight controls of the harvester were badly damaged in the fighting. I doubt it'll fly, but it'll provide more refuge than the lander. You'll have to come down to us.”

“Yes, sir,” Hoban said, without enthusiasm. “What about the volunteers?”

“We've lost touch with them,” Stan answered. “As soon as we get ourselves out of here, they'll be our first order of business.”

Hoban didn't like it, but it didn't seem the time or place to voice a disagreement.

“It ought to be simple enough,” Stan said. “What you need to do, as soon as the weather stabilizes a little, is send the backup lander down here to pick us up. Our situation here is none too stable.”

“We can't send the backup lander,” Hoban said. “I told you, sir, Badger and his men took it. Can you maneuver at all in your lander, Dr. Myakovsky?”

“I don't know,” Stan said. “They weren't made for that sort of thing. And the weather down here is getting pretty severe.”

“It's a major storm,” Captain Hoban told him. “The worst of it is heading your way.”

“Damn!” Stan spat. “You can't maneuver the Dolomite to pick us up, can you?”

“Not in this weather. None of us would stand a chance.”

“All right.” Stan paused. “Just a minute, let me think.”

It was then that the storm front burst in all its fury upon the lander and the unprotected splinter of land it rested upon. Despite its weight, the lander was rocked to its foundations. The earth beneath it rippled and swayed. Lights went out and were replaced by the dull red glow of emergency lighting. Julie screamed as another motion of the storm shot her legs out from under her. Gill caught her before she was slammed into a support.

“Into the pod!” Stan shouted, referring to the small escape vehicle that the lander carried. “Gill, get in there and get power up.”

Gill paused for a moment, looking at the five-point steel door separating them from the lander's rear compartment. “Maybe I should stay and try to help the crew?”

“They don't have a chance,” Stan said. “We need your help to keep us alive! Now move!”

The three of them, Stan, Gill, and Julie, struggled back to the pod and, during a brief lull, got in. Stan slammed home the hatch and Julie dogged it into place. Gill waited until they were all strapped in, then blew open the lander's exit doors. The storm swept in.

Gill took the pod out under full acceleration. There was a moment of intoxicating freedom as the pod pulled away from the ship, then the full fury of the storm caught the little craft.

Stan just had time to secure himself into a command chair by magnetic clamps, then the pod was launched into the air like a rocket from a launcher. As it turned, Stan could see the land beneath the lander collapse, throwing the vehicle into a deep pit that suddenly yawned beneath it.

Glancing around, he saw that Julie was secured on a deceleration couch. A moment later the internal lighting went out.

The storm blazed at the pod's windows. There were long, stunning lines of force, outlined by a driving rain, lashing in at them. The pods spun around, its automatic stabilizers working hard to keep it on an even keel. The ground came up sickeningly below them, and the pod's jets blazed, avoiding the collision. They were airborne, and the sky through which they tore was colored ocher and purple. It was a world without stability, a place where titanic forces battled as though it were the beginning of time.

“Can't you get her down, Gill?” Stan called out above the deafening clatter.

“I'm trying, Doctor,” Gill said, busy over the controls.

“You can do it, Gill!” Julie cried.

“We hope,” Stan said.

Gill's long fingers played across the controls. The pod seemed to flutter and skitter like a crazed bat in the luridly lit space between the harsh ground below and the beetling thunderheads above. The little craft spun like a leaf driven by a storm. Julie had to shut her eyes tightly to control the vertigo and nausea that racked her as the pod trembled and shook and rattled like a riveting machine gone berserk.

For Stan the pain was almost unbearable as his tortured lungs strove to replace the air that the violent motions of the storm were driving out of him. He had never known such pain. And yet, paradoxically, he was also experiencing a moment of great exhilaration, a feeling of himself as a conquistador of the new age, persevering through pain and hardship as a new world and new opportunities came into sight.