Next of Kin Read online

  The eyes blinked out, blinked on, then disappeared. There came the scuffling, slithering sounds of a cumbersome creature backing away fast. Gradually the noise died out in the distance. Leeming found himself unable to decide whether it had been one animal or two, whether it walked or crawled, whether it was the Zangastan equivalent of a prowling tiger or no more than a curious cow. At any rate, it had gone.

  Sitting by the tree-trunk, he kept the fire going and maintained a wary watch until the dawn.

  With the sunrise he breakfasted on a can of soup and a sandwich. Stamping out the fire, he picked up his belongings and headed to the south. This direction would take him farther from the centre of the search and, to his inward regret, would also put mileage between him and the concealed dump of real Terran food. On the other hand, a southward trek would bring him nearer to the equatorial belt in which he had seen three spaceports during his circumnavigation. Where there are ports there are ships.

  Dawn had not lasted an hour before a jetplane shot over-head. A little later four helicopters came, all going slow and skimming the trees. Leeming squatted under a bush until they had passed, resumed his journey and was nearly spotted by a buoyant fan following close behind the ’copters. He heard the whoosh of it in the nick of time, flung himself flat beside a rotting log and did his best to look like a shapeless patch of earth. The thing’s downward air-blast sprayed across his back as it floated above him. Nearby trees rustled their branches, dead leaves fluttered to ground. It required all his self-control to remain perfectly motionless while, a pair of expressionless, snakelike eyes stared down.

  The fan drifted away; its pilot fooled. Leeming got to his feet, glanced at his compass and pressed on. Energetically he cussed all fans, those who made them and those who rode them. They were slow, had short range and carried only one man. But they were dangerously silent. If a fugitive became preoccupied with his own thoughts, ceasing to be on the alert, he could amble along unaware of the presence of such a machine until he felt its air-blast.

  Judging by this early activity the search was being pursued in manner sufficient to show that some high-ranking brasshat had been infuriated by his escape. It would not be Klavith, he thought. A major did not stand high enough in the military caste system. Somebody bigger and more influential had swung into action, Such a character would make an example of the unfortunate Klavith and every guard in the barrack-block. While warily he trudged onward he couldn’t help wondering what Klavith’s fate had been; quite likely anything from being boiled in oil to demotion to private, fourth class. On an alien world one cannot define disciplinary measures in Terran terms.

  But it was a safe bet that if he, John Leeming, were to be caught again they’d take lots better care of him—such as by binding him in mummy-wrappings or amputating his feet or something equally unpleasant. He’d had one chance of freedom and had grabbed it with both hands; they wouldn’t give him another opportunity. Among any species the escaper is regarded as a determined troublemaker deserving of special treatment.

  All that day he continued to plod southward. Half a dozen times he sought brief shelter while air machines of one sort or another scouted overhead. At dusk he was still within the forest and the aerial snooping ceased. The night was a repetition of the previous one with the same regrets over the loss of his blankets, the same difficulty in making a fire. Sitting by the soothing blaze, his insides filled and his legs enjoying. a welcome rest, he felt vaguely surprised that the foe had not thought to maintain the search through the night. Although he had shielded his fire from ground-level observation it could easily be spotted by a night-flying plane; it was a complete giveaway that he could not hope to extinguish before it was seen from above.

  The next day was uneventful. Aerial activity appeared to have ceased. At any rate, no machines came his way. Perhaps for some reason known only to themselves they were concentrating the search elsewhere. He made good progress without interruption or molestation and, when the sun stood highest, used the lens to create a smokeless fire and give himself another meal. Again he ate well, since the insipid but satisfying alien food was having no adverse effect upon his system. A check on how much he had left showed that there was sufficient for another five or six days.

  In the mid-afternoon of the second day afterward he reached the southern limit of the forest and found himself facing a broad road. Beyond it stretched cultivated flatlands containing several sprawling buildings that he assumed to be farms. About four miles away there arose from the plain a cluster of stone-built erections around which ran a high wall. At that distance he could not determine whether the place was a fortress, a prison, a hospital, a lunatic asylum, a factory protected by a top security barrier, or something unthinkable that Zangastans preferred to screen from public gaze. Whatever it was, it had a menacing appearance. His intuition told him to keep his distance from it.

  Retreating a couple of hundred yards into the forest, he found a heavily wooded hollow, sat on a log and readjusted his plans. Faced with an open plain that stretched as far as the eye could see, with habitations scattered around and with towns and villages probably just over the horizon, it was obvious that he could no longer make progress in broad day-light. On a planet populated by broad, squat, lizard-skinned people a lighter-built and pink-faced Terran would stand out as conspicuously as a giant panda at a bishops’ convention. He’d be grabbed on sight, especially if the radio and video had broadcast his description with the information that he was wanted.

  The Combine included about twenty species half of whom the majority of Zangastans had never seen. But they had a rough idea of what their co-partners looked like and they’d know a fugitive Terran when they found him. His chance of kidding his captors that he was an unfamiliar ally was mighty small; even if he could talk a bunch of peasants into half-believing him they’d hold him pending a check by authority.

  Up to this moment he’d been bored by the forest with its long parade of trees, its primitiveness, its silence, its lack of visible life. Now he viewed it as a sanctuary about to withdraw its protection. Henceforth he’d have to march by night and sleep by day providing that he could find suitable hiding places in which to lie up. It was a grim prospect.

  But the issue was clear-cut. If he wanted to reach a spaceport and steal a scout boat he must press forward no matter what the terrain and regardless of risks. Alternatively, he must play safe by remaining in the forest, perpetually foraging for food around its outskirts, living the life of a hermit until ready for burial.

  The extended day had several hours yet to go; he decided to have a meal and get some sleep before the fall of darkness. Accordingly he started a small fire with the lens, made himself a can of hot soup and had two sandwiches: Then he curled himself up in a wad of huge leaves and closed his eyes. The sun gave a pleasant warmth, sleep seemed to come easy. He slipped into a quick doze. Half a dozen vehicles buzzed and rattled along the nearby road. Brought wide awake, he cussed them with fervour, shut his eyes and tried again. It wasn’t long before more passing traffic disturbed him.

  This continued until the stars came out and two of the five small moons shed an eerie light over the landscape. He stood in the shadow of a tree overlooking the road and waited for the natives to go to bed—if they did go to bed rather than hang bat-like by their heels from the rafters.

  A few small trucks went past during this time. They had orange-coloured headlights and emitted puffs of white smoke or vapour. They sounded somewhat like model locomotives. Leeming got the notion that each one was steam-powered, probably with a flash-boiler fired with wood. There was no way of checking on this.

  Ordinarily he wouldn’t have cared a hoot how Zangastan trucks operated: Right now it was a matter of some importance. The opportunity might come to steal a vehicle and thus help himself on his way to wherever he was going, but as a fully qualified space-pilot he had not the vaguest idea of how to drive a steam engine. Indeed, if threatened with the death of a thousand cuts he’d have been comp
elled to admit that he could not ride a bike.

  While mulling his educational handicaps it occurred to him that he’d be dim-witted to sneak furtively through the night hoping for a chance to swipe a car or truck. The man of initiative makes his chances and does not sit around praying for them to lie placed in his lap.

  Upbraiding himself, he sought around in the gloom until he found a nice, smooth, fist-sized rock. Then he waited for a victim to come along. The first vehicle to appear was travelling in the wrong direction, using the farther side of the road. Most of an hour crawled by before two more came together, also on the farther side, one close behind the other.

  Across the road were no trees, bushes or other means of concealment; he’d no choice but to keep to his own side and wait in patience for his luck to turn. After what seemed an interminable period a pair of orange lamps gleamed in the distance, sped toward him. As the lights grew larger and more brilliant he tensed in readiness.

  At exactly the right moment he sprang from beside the tree, hurled the rock and leaped back into darkness. In his haste and excitement, he missed. The rock shot within an inch of the windshield’s rim and clattered on the road. Having had no more than a brief glimpse of a vague, gesticulating shadow, the driver continued blithely on, unaware that he’d escaped a taste of thuggery.

  Making a few remarks more emphatic than cogent, Leeming recovered the rock and resumed his vigil. The next truck showed up at the same time as another one coming in the opposite direction: He shifted to behind the tree-trunk. The two vehicles passed each other at a point almost level with his hiding-place. Scowling after their diminishing beams he took up position again.

  Traffic had thinned with the lateness of the hour and it was a good while before more headlights came beaming in the dark and running on road’s near side: This time he reacted with greater care and took better aim. A swift jump, he heaved the rock, jumped back.

  The result was the dull whup of a hole being bashed through transparent plastic. A guttural voice shouted something about a turkey-leg, this being an oath in local dialect. The truck rolled another twenty yards, pulled up. A broad, squat figure scrambled out of the cab and ran toward the rear in evident belief that he’d hit something.

  Leeming, who had anticipated this move, met him with raised spanner. The driver didn’t even see him; he bolted round the truck’s tail and the spanner whanged on his pate and he went down without a sound. For a horrid moment Leeming thought that he had killed the fellow. Not that one Zangastan mattered more or less in the general scheme of things. But he had his own peculiar status to consider. Even the Terrans showed scant mercy to prisoners who killed while escaping.

  However, the victim emitted bubbling snorts like a hog in childbirth and had plenty of life left in him. Dragging him onto the verge and under a tree, Leeming searched him, found nothing worth taking. The wad of paper money was devoid of value to a Terran who’d have no opportunity to spend it.

  Just then a long, low tanker rumbled into view. Taking a tight grip on the spanner, Leeming watched its approach and prepared to fight or run as circumstances dictated. It went straight past, showing no interest in the halted truck.

  Climbing into the cab, he had a look around, found that the truck was not steam-powered as he had thought. The engine was still running but there was no firebox or anything resembling one. The only clue to power-source was a strong scent like that of alcohol mixed with a highly aromatic oil.

  Tentatively he pressed a button and the headlights went out. He pressed it again and they came on. The next button produced a shrill, catlike yowl out front. The third had no effect whatever, he assumed that it controlled the self starter. After some fiddling around he found that the solitary pedal was the footbrake and that a lever on the steering-wheel caused the machine to move forward or back at speed proportionate to the degree of its shift. There was no sign of an ignition-switch, gear-change lever, headlight dipper or parking brake. The whole lay-out was a curious mixture of the ultra-modern and the antiquated.

  Satisfied that he could drive it, he advanced the lever. The truck rolled forward, accelerated to a moderate pace and kept going at that. He moved the lever farther and the speed increased. The, forest slid past on his left; the flatlands on his right and the road was a yellow ribbon streaming under the bonnet. Man, this was the life! Relaxing in his seat and feeling pretty good, he broke into ribald song.

  The road split. Without hesitation he choose the arm that tended southward. It took him through a straggling village in which very few lights were visible. Reaching the country beyond he got onto a road running in a dead straight line across the plain. Now all five moons were in the sky, the landscape looked ghostly and forbidding. Shoving the lever a few more degrees, he raced onward.

  After an estimated eighty miles he by-passed a city, met desultory traffic on the road but continued in peace and unchallenged; Next he drove past a high stone wall surrounding a cluster of buildings resembling those seen earlier. Peering upward as he swept by, he tried to see whether there were any guards patrolling the wall-top but it was impossible to tell without stopping the truck and getting out. That he did not wish to do, preferring to travel as fast and as far as possible while the going was good.

  He’d been driving non-stop at high speed for several hours when a fire-trail bloomed in the sky and moved like a tiny crimson feather across the stars. As he watched, the feather floated round in a deep curve, grew bigger and brighter as it descended. A ship was coming in. Slightly to his left and far over the horizon there must be a spaceport.

  Maybe within easy reach of him there was a scout-boat fully fuelled and just begging to be taken up. He licked his lips at the thought of it.

  With its engine still running smoothly the truck passed through a limb to another large forest. He made mental note of the place lest within short time he should be compelled to abandon the vehicle and take to his heels once more. After recent experiences he found himself developing a strong affection for forests; on a hostile world they were the only places offering anonymity and liberty.

  Gradually the road tended leftward, leading him nearer and nearer toward where the hidden spaceport was presumed to be. The truck rushed through four small villages in rapid succession, all dark, silent and in deep slumber. Again the road split and this time he found himself in a quandary. Which arm would take him to the place of ships?

  Nearby stood a signpost but its alien script meant nothing to him. Stopping the truck, he got out and examined his choice of routes as best he could in the poor light. The right arm seemed to be the mare heavily used to judge by the condition of its surface. Picking the right side, he drove ahead.

  Time went on so long without evidence of a spaceport that he was commencing to think he’d made a mistake when a faint glow appeared low in the forward sky. It came from somewhere behind a rise in the terrain, strengthened as he neared. He tooled up the hill, came over the crest and saw in a shallow valley a big array of floodlights illuminating buildings, concrete emplacements, blastpits and four snouty ships standing on their tail-fins.

  SIX

  He should have felt overjoyed: Instead he became filled with a sense of wariness and foreboding. A complete getaway just couldn’t be as easy as he’d planned: there had to be a snag somewhere.

  Edging the truck onto the verge, he braked and switched off his lights. Then he surveyed the scene more carefully. From this distance the vessels looked too big and fat to be scout-boats, too small and out-of-date to be warships. It vas very likely that they were cargo-carriers, probably of the trampship type.

  Assuming that they were in good condition and fully prepared for flight it was not impossible for an experienced, determined pilot to take one up single-handed. And if it was fitted with an autopilot he could keep it going for days and weeks. Without such assistance he was liable to drop dead through sheer exhaustion long before he was due to arrive anywhere worth reaching. The same problem did not apply to a genuine scout-boat because
a one-man ship had to be filled with robotic aids. He estimated that these small merchantmen normally carried a crew of at least twelve apiece, perhaps as many as twenty.

  Furthermore; he had seen a vessel coming in to land-so at least one of these four had not been serviced and was unfit for flight. There was no way of telling which one was the latest arrival. But a ship in the hand is worth ten someplace else. To one of his profession the sight of waiting vessels was irresistible.

  Reluctance to part company with the truck until the last moment, plus his natural audacity, make him decide that there was no point in trying to sneak across the well lit spaceport and reach a ship on foot. He’d do better to take the enemy by surprise, boldly drive into the place, park alongside a vessel and scoot up its ladder before they had time to collect their wits.

  Once inside a ship with the airlock closed he’d be comparatively safe. It would take them far longer to get him out than it would to take him to master the strange controls and make ready to boost. He’d have shut himself inside a metal fortress and the first blast of its propulsors would clear the area for a couple of hundred yards around. Their only means of thwarting him would be to bring up heavy artillery and hole or topple the ship. By the time they’d dragged big guns to the scene he should be crossing the orbit of the nearest moon.

  He consoled himself with the thoughts as he chivvied the truck onto the road and let it surge forward but all the time he knew deep within his mind that this was to be a crazy gamble. There was a good chance that he’d grab himself a cold-dead rocket short of fuel and incapable of taking off. In that event all the irate Zangastans need do was sit around until he’d surrendered or starved to death. That they’d be so slow to react as to give him time to swap ships was a possibility almost non-existent.