Travis only knew that the energy wash of that blow crushed him back into the globe, hurled him into the inner door of the lock with Ross and Ashe thrust tight against him. Their bodies were flattened on the metal wall of the ship until the breath was forced from their lungs and the world went black about them.
Travis was on the floor, fighting for the air his body had to have, pain in bands about his chest. And before his blurred eyes was the open door of the port. In that moment all that mattered was that oblong of emptiness. Beneath the torture of his body, he knew that that space must be shut out for what lay beyond it meant final extinction.
He clawed at the body across his knees, turned over somehow and inched painfully from under its weight, moving in a worm’s progress toward the outer port. There was a singing in his ears, filling his head, adding to his daze. Then he was staring out into the glare of sun and sand.
At first he thought he was lightheaded. What he was seeing could not be true. For there was no wind, yet from the hidden floor of the landing space sand was rising in thin, unwavering sheets, walling in the globe. And those curtains of grit arose vertically, unmoved by any breeze! It could not happen—yet before his eyes it did.
He lunged to his knees, thrust against the door, shut out the curtains of sand, the harsh light of the sun, the thing which could not be true. And as his hands fumbled to shoot home the alien bolts, the pain lessened. He could breathe again without the constriction which had held his lungs imprisoned. He turned to the other two.
Alarmed by the congested blueness of their faces, Travis jerked both men up into a sitting position against the wall. Ashe’s blue eyes opened.
“What—?” He only got out that one faint word as Travis turned his attention to Ross.
There was a thin thread of blood trickling from the corner of the younger scout’s slack mouth. He moaned as Travis shook him gently. Ashe moved and winced, his hands going to his chest.
“What happened?” He was able to get out the whole demand this time.
“The space—marines—landed.” Ross’s lips shaped the words one at a time. There was a shadow of a grin about them. “—On me, I think.”
“Hullloooo down there!” The call was disembodied over the ship’s com, but it was imperative. “What’s going on?”
Although the hull could cut out sun, sound, and the world without, they could now feel movement through its layers of protection. It was as if the ship were being buffeted by some force. Those walls of sand? Travis hauled himself to the ladder wall and began to climb, seeking the screen by the controls which was now their only link with outside.
He discovered Renfry standing before that link, his disbelieving eyes on thick curdles of sand, sand rising from the ground with steady purpose to engulf the ship. They were on the point of being buried in a sea of grit, and there was no reason to believe that that was not directed, consciously, by active animosity and intelligence.
“Can we get out?” Travis dragged himself to the nearest seat. “Any way to up ship?”
If the tape governed their departure according to the earlier schedule, they were stuck here for another night, another day. By that time the globe could be so deeply buried that there would be no hope of blasting free from the tons of sand. They would be sealed into a living tomb.
Renfry’s hands went out to the keyboard of the controls, hesitated there. His lips tightened.
“It’s a big risk but I could try.”
“It’ll probably be a bigger risk to stay.” Travis remembered the two he had left at the lock. They must be brought out of danger before the shock of blast-off. “Give me five minutes,” he said. “Then blow—if you can!”
He found Ashe on his feet, dragging Ross out into the corridor. Travis hurried to help.
“Renfry is going to try to blast off,” he reported. “We’re being buried in sand.”
They got Ross to a bunk. Ashe flopped into the adjoining one, and Travis barely made it to the next cabin and the waiting cushion there, when the warning shrilled through the com. There was the vibration of laboring engines. But it went on far longer than before. Travis lay tense, willing the wrench of blast-free to come, counting off seconds . . .
The vibration was building up—higher than he had ever known it to go before. And the ship rocked on its base, movement and sound becoming one, a sickening mixture which churned the stomach, deadened thought but not fear.
The break came in an instant of prolonged red agony. Afterward came blackness—nothing at all . . .
Vibration was gone, sound was gone—but sensation remained. And the clean, aromatic scent of the healing jelly which filled the bunks on occasion of need. Travis opened his eyes. Had they pulled free from the desert planet?
He sat up, brushing the jelly from him. It slid easily from his skin, from the suit, leaving the usual well-being of mind and body. The confidence which had been jolted out of him had already flooded back. He got to his feet, went to peer into the neighboring cabin.
Ashe and Ross still lay inert under the quivering mounds of that substance on which the aliens had based their first aid. He climbed to the control cabin.
Renfry was strapped into the pilot’s chair, but his head lolled limply on his shoulders, his white face alarming Travis. His questing fingers found a slow pulse. He unfastened the technician and somehow managed, with the aid of weightlessness, to get him to his bunk below. The screen presented only that swirl of dead black which was the sign of hyperspace. They had not only broken loose from the sand trap, they were also embarked on the next leg of the long journey which might or might not take them home.
How long had that portion of the journey lasted before? Nine days by Renfry’s watch—nine days between the sand and the fueling port. Nine days until they could be sure that Renfry’s blast-off had not thrown the tape off course.
As they recovered from that shock Ashe took command, using the loot they had gathered from the storehouse of records to focus their interest outside themselves. On the plea of hunting another ship’s operation manual, he set them to work in shifts at the record reader, processing every tape which could still be run through that machine. More than one promising coil broke, whipped into a tangle they did not dare try to unravel. But even those must be kept for the experts at home to study. For Ashe never admitted after their break from the desert world that they were not going to get home. He pointed out that the odds they had already licked totaled a formidable sum and that there was no reason to believe that their luck would not continue to hold.
But even Ashe, Travis thought to himself, must have doubts, be as nervous as the rest—though he did not show it—when Renfry’s watch marked the ninth day’s flight and they had no warning of arrival at the fueling port. They made only a pretense of a midday meal. Travis had calculated rations just that morning. By going on very slim supplies, they would have enough of the food they dared use to see them home—if the voyage was not prolonged. He reported that fact to Ashe and received only an absent-minded grunt in reply.
Then—as if to prove all their worst forebodings untrue—the warning came. Travis strapped down, sharing quarters with Ross this time. The other grinned at him.
“The chief’s called it right again! Here we go for a shot of gas from the service station—then home!”
Even the discomfort of landing could be forgotten when they did see about them the ruined towers marking off landing spaces, the metallic turquoise sky of their first galactic port. Why, they were almost home!
They clattered down to the space lock and opened it eagerly—to watch for the creeping snake of the fuel line and its attendant robot. But long moments went by and there was no movement in the shadow of the nearest tower. Travis studied the immediate terrain. Had they set down in the same square they had visited before? Might a change in so slight a matter provide the reason for the silence about them?
“Could be due to the time element.” As Ashe’s voice sounded in his helmet com, the old man might have been reading his thoughts. “We left the second stop well ahead of our former schedule.”
They clung to that hope as an hour, and then two, passed and there was no movement from the tower. Pooling their recollections of the place, they were fairly certain that they had landed in the same square. And they avoided putting into words the other dire possibility—that the mechanism of the ancient port had at last been exhausted, perhaps by the very effort put upon it weeks before when the globe had been serviced there.
Renfry spoke at last. “I don’t know how much fuel we have on board. I can’t even tell you the nature of that fuel. And whether we can take off without more is also an open question. But if we can, I don’t believe we’ll be able to finish the trip. We may be working against time—but we’ll have to discover if we can push those machines into one more job. And we’ll have to do it quick!”
They swung out of the globe, and Renfry crawled under its arching side, to discover a new catastrophe. If there had been any fuel left in the ship’s sealed storage compartments, it was gone now. There was an ominous damp patch spreading from an opening at ground level.
Renfry’s voice came hollowly. “That’s done it, fellas. She’s empty. Unless you can get that pipe line on the job again, we’re grounded for keeps.”
“What made that open up?” Ross wondered with the bafflement of one to whom machines were still mysterious save for their most obvious functions.
“Might be some mechanism triggered by this.” Ashe stamped on the pavement. “Well, let’s go and look for the robot and that animated pipe line.”
They walked toward the tower. From ground level the structure looked even more pointed and needle-like. There was an opening at the foot, the doorway from which the robot had come. Ashe reached that and stood for a moment peering in.
The chunky robot which had clanked into duty at their first visit was still there, just within the doorway. And beyond, plain to be seen in a rusty, yellowish light, were a corporal’s guard of its fellows. All alike, they were backed against the far wall as if awaiting some long-past official inspection.
From a well in the center of the floor, to be glimpsed around the bulk of the robot in the doorway, was a massive piece of metal which Travis recognized as the “head” of the snake pipe line. Ashe reached out almost reluctantly to push the robot. To their surprise the machine, which had appeared so massive and immobile answered to that handling. It did not react the way a shaken alarm clock would. Instead it toppled forward, oddly flaccid. One of the arms clattered loose and spun across the pavement to strike the snake’s head.
“It’s moving! Look—it’s moving!”
Ross was right. In a jerky, sullen manner the heavy end of the mobile pipe line raised, inched forward about a foot while the humans held their breaths in hope—until it fell supinely once more.
“Hit it again,” advised Ross.
Ashe edged around the prostrate robot to inspect more closely what they could see of the pipe. This small portion displayed no signs of deterioration. He stooped, took a good grip on the “head” and tugged. Then he hurriedly jumped back while Ross and Travis kicked the robot out of the path of the creeping snake. Two feet—three—out in the open it went—and headed for the ship. Renfry saw them coming and waved, crawling back under the bulge of the globe to make ready for the pipe’s arrival.
But they had exulted too soon. Some four feet away from the tower the head sank to earth once more. Ashe tried his former method of revival, without result. They took turns shaking it, together and separately. It was much heavier than the robot and they could not urge it into any further effort.