This time Dane could see the nose lights, green as the glowing eyes of a night hunter. The machine dipped very low, pointing almost directly at Meshler and him. Then the craft went into descend, the drone of the motor louder. Dane looked at the one jack he could see from his position. The man was tense. He held the tangler so that the adhesive stream, which would congeal instantly on contact with flesh, would spurt into the small portion of ground anyone must cross to reach Dane and Meshler.

The Terran could not see beyond the lights. He did not doubt, however, that the rest of the enemy company was on the move, drawing in to be ready for attack when the flitter touched ground, but not until they were sure, he supposed, that all were out of the craft. Otherwise the pilot could lift, leaving them empty-handed.

What followed was almost as if his thoughts had been broadcast, picked up by esper. The forehatch opened before the tripoint of the landing gear touched the ground, and a figure leaped free from the flitter. He landed on his feet and ran, not straight for the two by the wreck, but in an evasion pattern, as if he knew of the ambush. At the same time, Dane dared to move. He rolled to one side, taking the jack by surprise-or perhaps the other was astounded that the flitter, having discharged only one, gave an upward bounce to go on hover over the wreck.

Dane fired, using his own body to partly screen his action. And though he had no time for a good aim, the near arm of the man with the tangler fell to his side. He lost his grip on the weapon and skidded forward trying to regain it. The Terran had not knocked out the enemy, but he had rendered him a one-armed warrior for several hours at least. The runner reached Meshler, sliding over the last bit of s.p.a.ce between them, squirming around to fire his own stunner. And he had better aim. Its beam struck the man still flopping after the lost tangler in the head, dropping him instantly.

Fluid lines spun by a tangler in the hands of the other ambusher spun out through the air. He fired on a net setting, and those fine threads would automatically seek the nearest human flesh to which they had been conditioned. Unfortunately for him, in order to reach the newcomer who had hunkered down beside Meshler, he had to edge a little into the open. And both Dane and the man from the flitter fired at the first inches of arm and shoulder he was forced to reveal for that shot.

The tangler still spun, its sticky output fountaining now straight up as it fell from his hand. A moment later those strands found a target, the man himself, spreading avidly about his head and shoulders.

"How bad is it?" Rip's voice broke through Dane's wonder at the shot, which might have been aimed by fortune herself.

"A knock on the head. But they're ready to send their monsters at us. And there're the settlers in the stones-"

"I think they will have other things to occupy them," Shannon answered. "As for worrying about their monsters-" He pulled from the front of his thermo jacket one-handedly, keeping the stunner on ready in the other, a box. Pushing in a plunger at its top, he said, "Where are the monsters?"

"That direction the last I saw-" Dane leaned away from the wreckage. The world still had a tendency toward a sideslip, but he fought that off.

"Good enough." Rip got to his feet before Dane could protest against so exposing himself. He drew back his arm for such a throw as sped a sleep-gas bomb and sent the box flying out into the dark. Dane felt a strange crawling sensation along his skin, and the pain behind his eyes awoke to a new agony.

"Sonics," Rip explained briefly. "That is tuned to the antline's frequency. Let's hope it picks up everything else they've turned loose from their misbegotten menagerie."

A moment later he dropped between Dane and the ranger as a tracer of blaster fire cut along the wreckage at what had been the level of his head and shoulders. The sear breath of that fire was a wave over all three of them. But, while Dane tried not to expect that another beam would crisp them, a second lance did not flash. Instead, there was confusion out in the night-cries, more tracers of fire, none however aimed in their direction.

"That does it," Dane heard Rip say close to his ear as they sprawled shoulder to shoulder on the ground. "They'll have plenty to think about beside us-"

"What-?" Rip did not let him finish the question. He was quick with an answer, as if he believed rea.s.surance would be a good restorative.

"We didn't come straight in, you know. Landed some Patrolmen, two rangers, and a couple of port guards by grav-jump belts. We then provided the distraction while they went into position behind. That's their force moving in now. The sonics will set the monsters on the run away from here-"

"That box from the Queen-they said it had drawn the monsters north-" Dane cut in.

"Just as well. They can be picked off then as they trail in that direction. Now, what about you?" Rip levered away the piece of wreckage that had been left to cover Meshler. Once his tangle bonds were revealed, it was easy enough to dissolve them. The ranger, groaning as he swung cramped and stiffened arms and legs, crawled out.

The flitter, which had hovered over them, was setting down again, not too far away. But this time there was no bounce to send it aloft, instead, the hatch opened, and a couple more men dropped out.

"Captain Jellico!" Dane recognized the first. The second wore the uniform of the Patrol, but it was modified on the collar by the winged, star-studded staff of the medic service, and the stranger carried an aid kit in one hand.

"What have you been doing to and for yourself, Thorson?" The captain went down on one knee and drew Dane up a little.

"Watch out, sir!" Dane caught at Jellico's sleeve and tried to pull him farther down. "They've blasters."

"And they've plenty of use for them elsewhere," the captain returned. "Let's have a look at you-"

In spite of Dane's protests, he found himself lying under the competent hands of the medic, who reported a little later, as he gave Dane a restorative shot, "Skull intact, but you took a bad knock. And this"-he threw away a handful of metal sc.r.a.ps-"gave you some cuts. Now, sniff this."

He broke an ampul under Dane's nose. A sharp scent stung the Terran's nostrils, clearing his head, and the pain became only a faraway suggestion of ache. He lay resting, the medic having gone to the stones and whomever there might need him. But though the captain vanished during the time his hurts were being a.s.sessed, Rip was still near.

"Where did the captain come from?"

"Long story," Shannon answered. 'Too long to tell now. But Cartl got his message through. And we were already on the move south. We heard enough of the second call from here to know it was probably a trap. So the Old Man was prepared."

"Cartl said the news came through that the crew was in prison, charged with sabotage."

"It began that way, until there were too many things to add up for even the thick-headed port police. Then they began to listen to us, a lot of questions were asked, and there were several answers to each one. The Patrol took a couple of local councilors into custody and had them probed. That was a serious step to take-might have lost the officers in charge their jackets and s.p.a.ce rights if their suspicions hadn't been verified.

"But it isn't only a cleanup here-the thing's bigger than just Trewsworld. And if the Patrol hadn't been already nosing around, perhaps we wouldn't have had our hearing so promptly. It all goes back to the Trosti foundations-"

"Thorson"-he was interrupted by Jellico as the captain came into the light-"how many men did you see here?"

"Six, seven, most of Terran or settler stock, I think. But their leader was an alien. They needed a flitter badly-had to get back to their camp. They were planning a withdrawal off-world-"

But the captain no longer seemed to be listening to him. Jellico gave a pull of his thermo hood, drawing it forward a little, and Dane caught sight of a com set in its side, much like the arrangement he himself had used to talk to the brach.

The brach! Why was it he kept forgetting the alien who had twice saved their lives-three times if you could count the breaking of the force field? It was almost as if something deliberately willed memory to sink to the back of his mind.

Now from behind the wreck trotted the creature from Xecho, walking on three legs. The fourth was folded up against his belly holding the second stunner. From the flitter dropped another brach, running with speed to meet her mate. They touched noses and then swung about, shoulder to shoulder, to face the Terrans.

Captain Jellico swung up his wrist, peeling back his glove to lay bare another mike, resembling the personna coms used by explorers.

"Finnerstan, some kind of a small airborne craft just took off-heading south. The brachs report it has one of the jacks on board. My guess, judging by what they are able to scan, is that it is the jack leader. And he must be heading for their command post. Intercept-"

There was no reply except a confirm click from the wrist mike. Dane sat up and waited apprehensively for his head to punish him. But, thanks to the medic, he was able to move, if weak. Rip got to his feet and reached down a long arm. And, pulling on it for support, Dane made it, too.

"Heading for the basin-"

"Basin? What basin?" Jellico demanded.

Dane muddled through the story of the force field prison, of the jack headquarters beyond. Jellico pushed his hood a little back and pulled at his lower lip. His expression-which was not really an expression but a stillness of feature-was one Dane knew of old to be the prelude to action.

"They had a flitter before," he said, "that was brought down by the settlers. That was what they set this trap for, to get another flitter. They had to get back-they have a s.p.a.cer there, and they wanted to take off."

Captain Jellico came to sudden life. "Finnerstan, they have a ship waiting for planet lift-at a base to the south. Have you anything to patrol that way?"

The reply came as a squeak. Jellico frowned, holding the com close to his ear.

"The sonic," Rip half whispered to Dane. "It interferes. And I don't think they will be able to broadcast back to the port with that on. If they shut it off-"

"Exactly!" But whether Jellico meant that in answer to Shannon or to what the squeak conveyed, Dane was not sure.

"Meshler should know the location of the basin," Dane offered. But looking around, he could not see the ranger.

"We have detects. They just won't work around the sonics. Come on!"

Dane and Rip, the two brachs trotting ahead, as if they had had some forewarning, fell in behind Jellico moving to the flitter. But with his hand already on the hatch, the captain turned to look at Dane.

"You're on sick call, Thorson."

Dane shook his head and then wished that he hadn't, as a warning thrust of pain suggested such gestures were not for him at present.

"I've been there-" It was a thin plea; Meshler would be the better guide. But somehow he wanted to see this through to the end. And when three men in Patrol uniforms and one of the s.p.a.ceport policemen came running, he was vindicated, for when the ranger was asked for, the report was that he had gone back to the park to see if any vehicles could be brought to transport the wounded.

In the end they were a mixed expedition. The two brachs had squeezed far to the back of the flitter, crouched down side by side, as if fully determined to stay where they were, daring anyone to pull them out. For the rest there were three Patrolmen, their leader, Finnerstan, who came up just before they slammed the hatch, the s.p.a.ceport policeman, two rangers, plus Jellico, Rip, and Dane.

It was rather a tight fit, and the captain himself had the pilot's seat, Finnerstan beside him, the rest of them packed in the back. This was no cargo flitter, rather a troop carrier from the port, so that they at least had seats-hard though those were-and did not have to squat.

Dane was behind Jellico, and as the captain lifted the flitter into the air, he asked without turning his head, "Which direction?"

"South and west-the best I can do, sir."

Finnerstan turned a little around to give him a measuring stare. "There is nothing there. We combed that district for months-"

"They are in a basin," Dane returned, "and have rigged a distort over it. From above you can't see anything-"

"A distort!" Finnerstan sounded incredulous. "But on such a scale as that-it is impossible!"

"From what I have heard and seen"-Captain Jellico's tone was cold-"these Trosti people have proved a lot of impossible things possible. I imagine once they are all run to earth, there are going to be a lot of preconceived scientific ideas turned inside out, back to fore. A distort, eh? How did you find it then?"

"We followed a crawler track."

"That gives us something-if we have daylight when we get near enough. But we have to make time. I don't like the idea of something flying south. Pilot arrives with a warning, and they'll lift off-world. Then-" He spoke to Finnerstan. "You may have finished their scheme here and now, but all you will have left are the pieces they have left behind. I can imagine they will leave precious few of those. What they can't lift with them, they'll destroy. And that's the last thing we must let them do. Once we're out of range of that sonic, you'd better code in a call. See if you can get help from the port. The Queen isn't armed well enough to take on a ship in s.p.a.ce. What about your cutter?"

"She can try," but Finnerstan did not sound too certain. And Dane thought that with the curious devices these jacks appeared to have for their equipment, he could well understand the other's apprehension.

If Finnerstan thought dark thoughts, they did not prevent him from experimenting with the flitter's com until it was clear. Then he sent out a call, repeating it several times in code numbers, until a click of acknowledgement came. He dropped the mike back in its holder and said, "The cutter will s.p.a.ce and go on patrol. Maybe she'll be in time-They are widening their radar, so anything taking off from this continent will register."

"Time," Jellico echoed. "Well, we have no way of buying time unless we can anchor them some way. But there is no use making plans until we are sure we have something concrete on which to base them."

18. SPOILS TO THE VICTORS.

"What is going on?" Dane turned to Rip, wedged in beside him.

"What isn't?" returned the other, ambiguously, but then he explained. "We don't know it all yet, but the Trosti foundations, here and apparently on other worlds, too, have been engaged in double work. The surface stuff is all that has always been accredited to them, what their reputation is founded upon. But underneath that, well, the Patrol has evidence now that they are the power behind at least four planetary governments in widely separated sections and that they have been building up an undercover net of control-"

"Who are they?" Dane interrupted. "Trosti is gone-or is he?"

"That's just one of the mysteries, though there are two explanations for that. One is that he is still very much among the living and the brain behind this all, or else the brain who has selected the brains, for the conspiracy is a composite effort, and not only of one species either. The other suggestion is that Trosti was never anything but a front for a devious and diverse organization who used clever publicity to promote him as a romantic figure to center attention.

"Anyway the Trosti foundations are a form of shadow government by now, though apparently the Patrol has been suspicious for some time. But it was only when they made the slipup on the Queen that enough of their plans were revealed here to give the law a loose end."

"I know they have an outlaw experimental station here with the retrogressed monsters," Dane said. "But is that all?"

"It might have begun so. Then they discovered something else."

"The rock!"

"Ore," corrected Rip, "and a very special kind. It is useful in esper work-a conductor for low-level telepathy, able to step up that and other esper talents to a remarkable degree. It exists on several planets, but it was not recognized until they built the retrogress machines and probably is one of those chance discoveries that happen as a side effect of a main experiment when the scientist in charge is intrigued enough to follow it up. There is reason to believe that most of this experimentation had been going on right here. They wanted Trewsworld. The holdings were a threat to any open work. Hence the monsters, which were developed and released gradually to drive the settlers out."

"The Patrol knew this and didn't act?"

"The Patrol suspected. Then we came in. The Trosti man at the port wanted us silenced. But short of killing us off, he couldn't do that. The captain appealed to the Board of Trade representative, and since the Patrol was in on that appeal, they had their opening. Though the Trosti had the Council here very much tied to them, they did not have any control over the Patrol. Where the Council tried to make things hot for us, once the captain had made his statement, the whole thing blew up in their faces, like a gas ball.

"And, as a gas ball, it was a knockout for them. They probably knew it, thought they could buy some time to ship their important records off-world by loosing the monsters-"

"We did that-or rather the brach did." Dane cut in with his story of the force field barrier and the fact he had overheard the jacks' talk of the monsters being drawn north by the other box. "But those prospectors"-he remembered suddenly-"if they weren't Trosti men, how did they-Or," he ended, "did they know about the rock?"

"Our guess is that they had some kind of new detect, and it registered enough of the unusual radiation from the ore to make them believe they had found something. They took samples, but it must have been from a vein the Trosti crowd had mapped, and they were killed, the rock taken. It was a quick job and another botched one. I would say that lately the Trosti has not been too well served by its people. That elaborate affair of shipping the box on the Queen-"

"Yes, and if they already had the ore and such boxes here, why take the chance of shipping another in?"

"One of the minor mysteries. Perhaps, this-our box-was from another one of their labs, sent in for checking. And it must have been from a place where there was need for extra cover, so that it had to be sent so. It was their bad luck that we had the brachs and the embryos in the cargo and that their man died. If he had made it undetected to port, all he would have had to do was rip off the mask and disappear. But it was a chance, and there must have been some pressing need to take it. When the Patrol backtracks we may know why someday-unless this will all be top security."

"Trosti-hard to believe that Trosti-"

"That statement will be echoed on a good many different worlds." One of the Patrolmen broke into their exchange. "Trouble is that the discoveries they did make for the benefit of the worlds on which they set up are generally so beneficial that we will have to have direct proof that those were only a cover or we can't go against public opinion-plus the fact that they will summon top legal talent and be able to fight a delaying action in every court we take them to. We are hoping that this, now being the most open of their secrets, will give us evidence-records, tapes, enough to smash this foundation, with clues to uncover leads to others."

"If we get there in time," Dane pointed out. "They could ship out the most important material and destroy the rest."

His head was starting to ache again. Perhaps the remedies of the Patrol medic were not as long lasting as he hoped. He could understand the need to conquer time, which was driving the captain, all of them on board. Also, they had no idea of what defenses beside the distort were in the basin. There was the control beam that had negated the power of the other flitters and brought them down at the will of the enemy. And such could be used to deliberately crash a ship. The jacks need only have one of those in order, and their pursuers would lose before any fight began.

There were plenty of other weapons to snap them out of the sky at the press of a b.u.t.ton. Unfortunately, memory presented too many in all their savage details to Dane. But once more it might have been that his thoughts were as plain to his companions as if his forehead was a transparent visa-screen.

"They can't use a control beam if they are readying for a takeoff," Rip observed thoughtfully. "That would interfere with a blast, set them off course from the first fire-down-"

"Even if they don't use that, I can name about five other defenses," Dane returned bleakly. He leaned his aching head back against the wall and closed his eyes.

"Have a suck." Something was thrust into his hand, and he glanced down to see he was holding a tube of E-ration; the heat cap had been twisted off so that a small thread of steam arose. For the first time Dane realized he was very hungry. He raised it to his mouth, his hand shaking a little, and squeezed the paste, warm enough to spread a welcome heat as it pa.s.sed downward, into his mouth. It was a very long time, he thought, since that meal at Cartl's holding, even longer since he had eaten regular food at established intervals.

But the E-ration, though it gave a man nothing to chew on and lacked much flavor, did banish hunger. And this time he was not limited to a quarter of a tube. He had a whole one to himself, while those about him were eating, too.

"The brachs?" For once memory worked as he swallowed the first mouthful.

"Have theirs." Rip nodded toward the rear of the cabin. The light was limited, but Dane could see an E-tube protruding from each horned snout.

"What about them?" he asked a little later as he squeezed the last drop from the tube and rolled it into a tight ball.

"The kits are at the lab, being given Veep Treatment," Rip answered. "But the female insisted upon coming with us. There has been a lot of excitement over them. If the brachs are degenerate intelligent life, then Xecho is going to have a problem. And it would seem that is true. It will probably be obligatory to do what can be done to return them to their proper intelligence-upsets a lot of history and will be quite a headache to all concerned."

"Are they esper at all?" Dane wondered.

"We don't know just what they are-yet. The lab has dropped all other experiments and is concentrating on them. It may be, since the principle of the retrogress machine is linked with the esper-inducing ore, that anything with a slight degree of such power has that power heightened. That's another headache-"

"Ha-" That was the Patrol officer. He held out his wrist, and on it was a detect, not unlike the one Tau had carried, except more compact and much smaller. "Radiation of the right type, two degrees west-"

"Right!" Jellico made the correction in their course. "How far?"

"Less than two units. It is leaking through a shield."