The road split. Without hesitation he choose the arm that tended southward. It took him through a straggling village in which very few lights were visible. Reaching the country beyond he got onto a road running in a dead straight line across the plain. Now all five moons were in the sky, the landscape looked ghostly and forbidding. Shoving the lever a few more degrees, he raced onward.
After an estimated eighty miles he by-passed a city, met desultory traffic on the road but continued in peace and unchallenged; Next he drove past a high stone wall surrounding a cluster of buildings resembling those seen earlier. Peering upward as he swept by, he tried to see whether there were any guards patrolling the wall-top but it was impossible to tell without stopping the truck and getting out. That he did not wish to do, preferring to travel as fast and as far as possible while the going was good.
He’d been driving non-stop at high speed for several hours when a fire-trail bloomed in the sky and moved like a tiny crimson feather across the stars. As he watched, the feather floated round in a deep curve, grew bigger and brighter as it descended. A ship was coming in. Slightly to his left and far over the horizon there must be a spaceport.
Maybe within easy reach of him there was a scout-boat fully fuelled and just begging to be taken up. He licked his lips at the thought of it.
With its engine still running smoothly the truck passed through a limb to another large forest. He made mental note of the place lest within short time he should be compelled to abandon the vehicle and take to his heels once more. After recent experiences he found himself developing a strong affection for forests; on a hostile world they were the only places offering anonymity and liberty.
Gradually the road tended leftward, leading him nearer and nearer toward where the hidden spaceport was presumed to be. The truck rushed through four small villages in rapid succession, all dark, silent and in deep slumber. Again the road split and this time he found himself in a quandary. Which arm would take him to the place of ships?
Nearby stood a signpost but its alien script meant nothing to him. Stopping the truck, he got out and examined his choice of routes as best he could in the poor light. The right arm seemed to be the mare heavily used to judge by the condition of its surface. Picking the right side, he drove ahead.
Time went on so long without evidence of a spaceport that he was commencing to think he’d made a mistake when a faint glow appeared low in the forward sky. It came from somewhere behind a rise in the terrain, strengthened as he neared. He tooled up the hill, came over the crest and saw in a shallow valley a big array of floodlights illuminating buildings, concrete emplacements, blastpits and four snouty ships standing on their tail-fins.
SIX
He should have felt overjoyed: Instead he became filled with a sense of wariness and foreboding. A complete getaway just couldn’t be as easy as he’d planned: there had to be a snag somewhere.
Edging the truck onto the verge, he braked and switched off his lights. Then he surveyed the scene more carefully. From this distance the vessels looked too big and fat to be scout-boats, too small and out-of-date to be warships. It vas very likely that they were cargo-carriers, probably of the trampship type.
Assuming that they were in good condition and fully prepared for flight it was not impossible for an experienced, determined pilot to take one up single-handed. And if it was fitted with an autopilot he could keep it going for days and weeks. Without such assistance he was liable to drop dead through sheer exhaustion long before he was due to arrive anywhere worth reaching. The same problem did not apply to a genuine scout-boat because a one-man ship had to be filled with robotic aids. He estimated that these small merchantmen normally carried a crew of at least twelve apiece, perhaps as many as twenty.
Furthermore; he had seen a vessel coming in to land-so at least one of these four had not been serviced and was unfit for flight. There was no way of telling which one was the latest arrival. But a ship in the hand is worth ten someplace else. To one of his profession the sight of waiting vessels was irresistible.
Reluctance to part company with the truck until the last moment, plus his natural audacity, make him decide that there was no point in trying to sneak across the well lit spaceport and reach a ship on foot. He’d do better to take the enemy by surprise, boldly drive into the place, park alongside a vessel and scoot up its ladder before they had time to collect their wits.
Once inside a ship with the airlock closed he’d be comparatively safe. It would take them far longer to get him out than it would to take him to master the strange controls and make ready to boost. He’d have shut himself inside a metal fortress and the first blast of its propulsors would clear the area for a couple of hundred yards around. Their only means of thwarting him would be to bring up heavy artillery and hole or topple the ship. By the time they’d dragged big guns to the scene he should be crossing the orbit of the nearest moon.
He consoled himself with the thoughts as he chivvied the truck onto the road and let it surge forward but all the time he knew deep within his mind that this was to be a crazy gamble. There was a good chance that he’d grab himself a cold-dead rocket short of fuel and incapable of taking off. In that event all the irate Zangastans need do was sit around until he’d surrendered or starved to death. That they’d be so slow to react as to give him time to swap ships was a possibility almost non-existent.
Thundering dawn the valley road, the truck took a wide bend, raced for the spaceport’s main gates. These were partly closed, leaving a yard-wide gap in the middle. An armed sentry stood at one side, behind him a hut containing others of the guard.
As the truck shot into view and roared toward him the sentry gaped at it in dumb amazement, showed the typical reaction of one far from the area of combat. Instead of pointing his automatic weapon in readiness to challenge he jumped into the road and tugged frantically to open the gates. The half at which he was pulling swung wide just in time for the truck to bullet through with a few inches to spare on either side. Now the sentry resented the driver’s failure to say, “Good morning!” or “Drop dead!” or anything equally courteous. Brandishing his gun, he performed a clumsy war-dance and screamed vitriolic remarks.
Concentrating on his driving to the exclusion of all else, Leeming went full tilt around the spaceport’s concrete perimeter toward where the ships were parked. A bunch of lizard-skinned characters strolling along his path scattered and ran for their lives. Farther on a long, low motorised trolley loaded with fuel cylinders slid out of a shed, stopped in the middle of the road. Its driver threw himself off his seat and tried to dig himself out of sight as the truck wildly swerved around him and threatened to overturn.
Picking the most distant ship as the one it would take the foe longest to reach, Leeming braked by its tail-fins, jumped out of the cab, looked up. No ladder. Sprinting around the base he found the ladder on the other side, went up it like a frightened monkey.
It was like climbing the side of a factory chimney. Halfway up he paused for breath, looked around. Diminished by distance and depth, a hundred figures were racing toward him. So also were four trucks and a thing resembling an armoured car. He resumed his climb, going as fast as he could but using great care because he was now so high that one slip would be fatal.