"It's what I'm going to do," he said. "That bastard down there has taken enough from me." He thumbed on the ship's communicator. "This is the captain speaking," he said. "As you know an act of aggression has been committed against this ship. We do not intend to accept this outrage without retaliation. The installation that directed the attack which resulted in the death of one of this ship's crew had been destroyed. Soon we will be returning to the out-galaxy blink route where we can make contact with headquarters to ask for a complete alien contact team. In the meantime we have a duty to perform. Down there on that planet lie the bodies of four of our people. As you may have heard, they are all my relatives. That is not the prime consideration. The important thing is that we have always given our dead a proper burial and that's what I intend to do with those down there on the surface."
Kirsty looked at Sheba and raised her eyebrows in surprise.
"Because of the condition of the bodies, recovery will be a delicate operation," Josh continued. "It cannot be accomplished by remote."
"Whooo," Kirsty whispered.
"I will lead the landing party," Josh said. "I'll need three volunteers."
"Pat Barkley, Captain," a voice said immediately. "I'll go."
In quick succession the rest of the crew repeated Pat's offer.
"Thank you," Josh said. "I'm going to designate Pat Barkley as my second on the surface. Pat, I'll leave it to you to pick the other two men."
When Josh turned off the communicator, Kirsty cleared her throat.
"Yes, Lieutenant Girard?" Josh asked.
"May I speak frankly, sir?"
"If you'll make it fast."
"If you land, you'll be breaking so many service regulations that it will take an hour of computer time just to list them," Kirsty said.
"But there is one regulation, Lieutenant, that supercedes all of the others," Josh said. "In space the captain's best judgment is the final criterion."
"Yes, sir," Kirsty said.
"You'll be senior aboard ship while I'm E.V.A.," Josh said. "I want Weapons on the alert. I want you to be ready to blast anything that moves, and if there's any real problem down there you are hereby ordered to use maximum force, if necessary, to insure the safety of this ship and her crew."
"Aye, sir," Kirsty said. She swallowed with difficulty, for her throat closed up as she absorbed the meaning of the captain's order. Maximum force, aboard an X&A ship, meant use of the galaxy's most terrible weapon, the planet buster.
The landing party was away within minutes. Kirsty felt the reaction of the Erin Kenner to the separation of the ship's launch. She adjusted a viewer and had the little vessel on screen as it fell away toward the gleaming surface.
"You're against this, aren't you?" Sheba asked.
"Very much so," Kirsty said. "Has your brother always been impulsive?"
"Anything but," Sheba said.
"Kirsty," Josh's voice said from the communicator, "we're at fifty thousand feet. We'll be landing in about ten minutes. All systems on the alert?"
"We're ready, Captain," Erin said.
"Good. Standby."
"Standing by," Kirsty said.
The ship was in a stationary orbit directly over the landing site. DF-2's thin, clear atmosphere made for excellent visibility of the surface.
Together Kirsty and Sheba watched the launch settle down toward the ice.
Kirsty was finding it difficult to believe that an X&A captain was disobeying, along with others, the two prime commandments regarding exploration and alien contact. Not only was the captain landing on a planet that had not been declared safe by the science division of the service, he had, in effect, declared war on an alien intelligence without so much as having sent available data back to headquarters.
She was thinking that she was setting herself up for a reprimand at best and a court martial at worst when she ordered the preparation of a standard permanent blink beacon. When the beacon was ready she activated its memory banks and, in one huge, electronic gulp, copied the entire contents of the Erin Kenner's computer into them.
"Hold on to your stomach," she told Sheba.
"Kirsty," said the voice of Josh Webster, "we're five minutes from touchdown."
"Standing by," Kirsty said, even as she pushed the button that would send the Erin Kenner six light-years into space. It took exactly two minutes and five seconds to kill the ship's movement relative to the stars and to plant the blink beacon. Two minutes and ten seconds after she had blinked away from DF-2, the ship was back in position.
"How's it going, Captain?" she sent.
"All quiet below," Josh said. "Two minutes away from touchdown."
"Keep talking, Captain," Kirsty said.
"One minute thirty and counting."
Apparently Josh was not aware that the ship had been light-years away from the ice planet. Kirsty would inform him, of course, but not at such a critical time. She didn't see how he could object to her having taken out a small insurance policy by planting a blink beacon out toward the periphery and the Rimfire route, a beacon that would be checked by any ship that passed nearby. Of course, no ship would find the beacon unless it was following the course of the two dead vessels below and the Erin Kenner. But if, God forbid, things were to go very, very wrong for the captain and his landing party, and if that wrongness somehow affected the Erin Kenner, at least there'd be a record of events prior to the captain's landing on the surface. If the unthinkable happened and the Erin Kenner joined the two civilian ships on Deep Freeze, whoever came next to DF-2 would reach the planet with the knowledge that a deadly threat lay beneath the ice.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
At first the Watcher considered the silencing of the female aboard the orbiting ship to be a mistake. The swift and deadly reaction of the intruder had caused serious damage to the network. Repair facilities were inadequate to counter total destruction. However, the trespasser had localized his attack in an area where the consequent thinning of the concealing cover of ice would reveal nothing more than a rocky plateau. In time, power could be increased in neighboring installations to extend the ice thinly over the affected area.
A hum of activity surged around the globe as a system of rerouted impulses isolated the mangled ganglia in the damaged units. When disrupted communications had been reestablished with all modules the Watcher reconsidered and determined that having seized the opportunityto strike within the enemy's ship, rather than having been ill-advised, had been the catalyst needed to gain a measure of control over the situation.
The raging emotions rising from the death of his mate gave the Watcher total access to the male who was the leader of the latest group of intruders. Influencing the others aboard the ship was proving to be more difficult. The inability to take command immediately, as had always been possible from the beginning, caused the Watcher to work to full capacity seeking an explanation. There were two interesting possibilities. Although the Watcher was self-renewing and thus for all practical purposes immortal, there was, as had been predicted by the Designers, a small amount of erosion of efficiency due to age. That was one feasible explanation for failure to command the intruders until they were distracted by strong emotions. It was possible, too, that the Designers had not properly anticipated the results of passing ages on the process of creation and evolution.
This last prospect was not to be seriously considered, for the Watcher's reasoning ability was based not only on the knowledge of the Designers but reflected their attitudes and prejudices. The Designers had known that the Sleepers would not be left to their dreamless rest for eternity. It was in the nature of things that someone would come. Somewhere among the stars the processes that had produced the Sleepers had been, were and would forever be in action and it was inevitable that beings of intelligence would be curious about the ice-shrouded planets, for life zone planets were the prized jewels of the galaxy, and as rare.