Free Space Gypsies by Murray Leinster Page B

to Karen—but Karen had received Howell’s orders as if there could be no possible other course of action. She, herself, picked out a light rifle with which she’d made good scores at targets. The Marintha ’s company, save for Howell, prepared for an essentially hopeless battle as if for amateur theatricals.
    Only Howell’s grimness was real. He’d handled the three small skeletons which appeared to be those of children. He did not look upon coming events as adventures in which nothing lethal or final could happen to the human participants. He could envision Karen killed: Karen the victim of such a blaster-bolt as had disabled the Marintha ; Karen wounded, injured, dying. He didn’t envision himself as killed; nobody can really do that. But even generations of total safety hadn’t erased the instinct of man to face lions or slug-ships in defence of a girl he cares for.
    So Howell was the one member of the Marintha ’s crew who knew bloodthirstiness in anticipation of the slug-ship’s landing. He couldn’t imagine what sort of beings manned—or creatured—a slug-ship, but already he hated them with a violence that harked back to the ancient days when men carried stone hammers and spears to kill with.
    Breen and Ketch had only enthusiasm to urge them on, but with an infinite amount of luck it might not matter. It could be that long-buried instincts would reappear when the fighting began. Target-shooting was a standard sport and on most worlds a man was expected to make a good score at the flip-targets as in much older days a man was expected to play a good hand of bridge. Living targets might help.
    “How about the radar?” asked Ketch briskly. “We want to be warned when they come.”
    “No!” said Howell angrily. “This is to be an ambush! The Marintha has to seem dead to make it one. They could pick up a radar-pulse!”
    “An ambush! ” Breen said zestfully. “Yes! I’ve seen them on drama-tapes. And we’re to lie in ambush!”
    Howell pointed out one of the Marintha ’s view-ports. If the slug-ship landed on this side, here was a good bit of cover. That spot would have a good field of fire. This other would be good concealment from which to shoot.
    “Try not to spoil the skins! ” said Ketch.
    Howell didn’t protest the confusion of a hunter’s thinking with that of a man fighting for considerably more than his own life.
    “Now, over on this side—”
    There was a whining noise from the control room. The all-wave receiver had picked up the drive of a slug-ship. Howell’s jaws clamped tightly. He was assuming that the slug-ship creatures thought like men, though they might have very different motives.
    But intelligence that arrived at space-drives like those of men, and booby traps such as men have been known to set for each other, and weapons like those of men—the huge blaster-bolt that had hit the Marintha was simply an oversized ball-lightning missile—if the slug-creatures paralleled human achievements, they must think like humans, though they need not feel like them at all.
    The whine of the distant space-drive stopped. It cut in again. Off once more. Howell could tell what the unseen space-vessel was doing. It was decelerating, of course, to come down and view the Marintha from nearby for its destruction, or whatever alternative the slug-creatures had in mind. If the eyes of the slug-creatures were no better than men’s, or their telescopes not more useful, it would want to arrive over the Marintha moderately low down. If it suspected powerful weapons of human ships, it would tend to stay high. In any case it would not land before it had in some fashion tested out those supposed weapons. If the four dummies in the dead space were seen and accepted as corpses, the testing might not be elaborate. But the Marintha had to lie perfectly still as if all its crew were dead or destroyed. And it might be destroyed anyhow.
    There came a mooing, bleating, howling sound from the all-wave