The Big Black Mark - A. Bertram Chandler [48]
"And what do you pick up now, Mr. Flannery?" asked Grimes.
"Nothin' new at all, Captain. They're still hatin' us, still wantin' their revenge."
"They'll not be getting it at that range!" remarked Grimes cheerfully. He was certain that the natives' airborne weaponry would be unable to touch him. And he would soon be getting off this world, where things had gone so disastrously wrong. The sooner he was back in Deep Space the better. He said, "Once the hoses are in, I'll lift ship."
He went to the big binoculars on their universal mount, and the officer who had been using them made way for him. The instrument was already trained on the dirigible. He knew there would be nothing fresh to see—he was just passing the time—but then his attention was caught by a bright, intermittent flickering. A weapon? Hardly. It did not look like muzzle flashes, and surely these people did not yet have laser. The reflection of the sunlight from a control cabin window? Probably. He realized that he was trying to read the long and short flashes as though they were Morse, and laughed at himself for making the futile attempt.
"Hoses in, sir."
"Good." Grimes started to walk back to his control chair—and stopped in mid-stride as a violent explosion from somewhere outside shook the ship. "In the lake!" somebody was shouting. "The lake!" Over the suddenly disturbed water a column of spray, intermingled with dirty yellow smoke, was slowly subsiding. And something big and black and glistening had surfaced, was threshing in its death throes. But nobody could spare the time to look at it to determine what manner of beast it was. There was a second burst, a flame-centered eruption of sand and water on the beach itself, closer to the ship than the first one had been.
Suddenly that flickering light from the dirigible made sense to Grimes. It was either a heliograph or a daylight signaling lamp, and the function of the airship was not to attack but to spot for a surface vessel with heavy long-range guns, hidden from Discovery's view, just as Discovery was hidden from hers. And what was she doing? he wondered.. Laddering, or bracketing? The question was an academic one.
A third projectile screamed in—this one much too close for comfort. Fragments of stone, earth, and metal rattled against the spaceship's hull and she shuddered and complained, rocking in her tripedal landing gear. There was no time for normal liftoff procedure—the ritual countdown, the warning to all hands over the intercom to secure for space. There was no time, even, for Grimes to adjust himself properly in his chair. The inertial drive was ready, as was the auxiliary reaction drive. He slammed the controls of each straight from Standby to Maximum Lift, hoping desperately that at this time, of all times, the temperamental engines would not decide to play up. The violent acceleration pushed him deep into the padding of his seat; others, not so lucky, were thrown to the deck. Discovery did not have time to complain about the rough handling. (Normally she was the sort of ship that creaks and groans piteously at the least provocation.) She went up like a shot from a gun—and a real shot, from a real gun, blew a smoking crater into the ground upon which she, only a split second before, had been resting.
Upward she roared on her column of incandescent steam, with the overworked inertial drive deafeningly cacophonous. Already the island was showing as a map in the periscope screen. Off the northern coast, a gray slug on the blue water, stood the warship. There was a scintillation of yellow flashes as her guns, hastily elevated, loosed off a wild, futile salvo, and another, and another. The shell bursts were all well below the rapidly climbing Discovery.
Laboriously Grimes turned his head, forcing it around against the crushing weight of acceleration, looked through the viewports. The airship was closer now, driving in at its maximum speed. But it did not matter. Discovery would be well above the dirigible by the time the courses