The Inheritors - A. Bertram Chandler [33]
"Take her south for a start, sir?" asked Pitcher. "And then, once we're out of Schnauzer's sight, we can bring her round on the course for Ballarat . . . ."
"No," decided Grimes. The same idea had occurred to him—but Lilian knew his destination, and she was at least on speaking terms with Danzellan and his officers. In any case—as compared with Drongo Kane—the Dog Star people were goodies, and if anything went badly wrong they would be in a position to offer immediate help. "No," he said again. "Head straight for Ballarat."
* * *
Ballarat was different from the other towns that they had seen. It was dominated by a towering structure, a great hulk of metal, pitted and weathered yet still gleaming dully in the morning sunlight. It was like no ship that Grimes or his officers had ever seen—although they had seen pictures and models of such ships in the astronautical museum at the Academy. It was a typical gaussjammer of the days of the Second Expansion, a peg-top-shaped hull with its wide end uppermost, buttressed by flimsy looking fins. To land her here, not far from the magnetic equator, her captain must have been a spaceman of no mean order—or must have been actuated by desperation. It could well have been that his passengers and crew were so weakened by starvation that a safe landing, sliding down the vertical lines of force in the planet's solar regions, would have been safe for the ship only, not for her personnel. Only the very hardy can survive the rigors of an arctic climate.
Hard by the ship was a long, low building. As seen from the air it seemed to be mainly of wooden construction, although it was roofed with sheets of gray metal. No doubt there had been cannibalization; no doubt many nonessential bulkheads and the like were missing from the gaussjammer's internal structure.
Billard brought the pinnace in low over the town. There were people in the streets, mainly women and children. They looked upward and pointed. Some of them waved. And then, quite suddenly, a smoky fire was lit in a wide plaza to the east of the gaussjammer. It was a signal, obviously. The tall streamer of smoke rose vertically into the still air.
"That's where we land," said Grimes. "Take her down, please, Mr. Billard."
"Aye, aye, sir!"
Quietly, without any fuss or bother, they landed. Even before the door was open, even before the last mutterings of the inertial drive had faded into silence, they heard the drums, a rhythmic thud and rattle, an oddly militaristic sound.
"Mphm?" grunted Grimes dubiously. He turned to Maya. "Are you sure the natives are friendly?"
She did not catch the allusion. "Of course," she said stiffly. "Everybody on Morrowvia is friendly. A queen is received courteously by her sister queens wherever she may go."
"I'm not a queen," said Grimes. "I'm not a king, even . . . ."
"The way you carry on sometimes, aboard your ship, I'm inclined to doubt the validity of that last statement," remarked Maggie Lazenby.
"Open up, sir?" asked Billard.
"Mphm. Yes. But nobody is to go outside—except myself—until I give the word. And you'd better have the twenty millimeters ready for use, Mr. Pitcher."
He belted on his pistols—one projectile, one laser—then set his cap firmly on his head. Maya said, "I am coming with you."
Grimes said, "I'm not in the habit of hiding behind a woman's skirts."
"What skirts?" asked Maggie Lazenby. Then, "Don't be silly, John. Maya's obviously one of them. When they see her with you they'll know that you're friendly."
It made sense.
Grimes jumped down from the open door to the packed earth of the plaza, clapping each hand to a pistol butt as soon as he was on the ground. Maya followed him. They stood there, listening to the rhythmic tap-tappity-tap that was, with every second, louder and louder.
And then a women—a girl—appeared from around the end of the long, low building. She was naked save for polished high boots and a crimson sash, and was carrying a flag on