“Take the shortest way.” Again Meshler appeared to be talking to himself. But a few minutes later, instead of turning east as his course had been earlier, the nose of the small craft veered west.
Meshler gave an exclamation and thumped a fist against one of the dials on the board. Its needle quivered a fraction but did not turn. Then he went to work, snapping levers, pushing buttons. There was no answering alteration in their course.
“What’s the matter?” Dane was enough of a flitter pilot himself to know that the craft was now acting as if it were locked on automatics, on a set course, and that the ranger could not break to hand control.
Tau leaned forward, his head nearly even with Dane’s. “Look at that indicator! We’re on a control beam!”
One of the dials did read that they were riding a powerful and pulling beam.
“I can’t break it!” Meshler’s hands dropped from the board. “It won’t answer the manuals.”
“But if no one set a course—and they didn’t—” Dane stared at the dial. Automatics could be set, even locked securely. But none of them had done that, and though they had been engrossed in getting the dragons on board, no one could have approached the flitter without being seen.
“Contact beam,” Meshler said thoughtfully, “but that is impossible! There is nothing in this direction. Oh, a few wandering hunters, maybe. And the Trosti experimental station. But that’s well north of here. And even they do not have the equipment to—”
“Somebody has,” Tau said. “And it would seem your wilderness holds more than you supposed, Ranger Meshler. How closely do you patrol it, anyway?”
Meshler’s head came up. There was a flush on his cheeks.
“We face now half a continent of wilderness. Most of it was aerial mapped. But as for exploring on land, we have too few men, very meager funds. And our jobs are to patrol and protect the holdings. There’s never been any trouble on Trewsworld before—”
“If you are going to say before the Queen arrived,” Dane retorted bitterly, “don’t. We didn’t produce a retrogressed antline, nor murder those two men in the crawler. And we certainly didn’t entangle our own ship on purpose. If we are caught in a contact beam, it has to be broadcast from an installation. So there’s more in the wilderness than you know.”
But Meshler did not seem to be listening. Instead, the ranger activated the com, holding the mike in his hand and rattling off a series of letters that must have been in code. Three times he repeated that, waiting each time for a reply. Then, as nothing came, he hung the mike back on its hook with a small shrug of his shoulders.
“Com out, too?” Tau asked.
“It would seem so,” Meshler answered. And still the flitter bored into a coming dusk of twilight, heading west into what the ranger admitted was the unknown.
9.HUNTERS OF MEN
The dark closed in, but when Dane would have snapped on the lights of the flitter, as Meshler made no move to, the ranger caught his wrist.
“No use letting ourselves be seen,” he explained, and Dane was disconcerted at his own instinctive but perhaps dangerous move.
“Where are we? Any clue?” Tau asked.
“Southwest! To our reports there is nothing here but the wilds,” Meshler returned. “Have I not said that?”
“This Trosti station,” persisted the medic. “With what are their experiments concerned? Ag work, veterinary procedures, or general research?”
“Ag work, but not altogether for Trewsworld. They have a conditioning-for-export license. But they are of no concern. I have visited them on my rounds. We are well past that site, plus the fact that they had no installation capable of a beam such as this.”
“Trosti,” Tau repeated thoughtfully. “Trosti—”
“Vegan Trosti. This is one of the foundations set up under his will,” Meshler supplied.
Vegan Trosti! Dane thought of the hundreds of rumors and supposedly authentic stories about Vegan Trosti. He was one of those men possessing what Terrans used to claim was a “golden touch.” Every invention he backed, every exploration he financed, was a success, pouring more and more credits into his hoard. No one had ever learned just how much wealth Trosti had amassed. At intervals he made over some astronomical sum to a research project. If that paid off, and they regularly did, the profit went to the lucky planet giving it a base.
There were, of course, the other tales, too, such as grew from the shadow of such a man—that his “luck” was not always a matter for open investigation; that some of the research projects could not bear too open a scrutiny, or that they carried on programs on two levels, one that could be reviewed openly, the other masked by the first and for purposes far less advantageous for the public.
But, though such rumors had become legends also, there had never been one bit of proof they were true. And the credit side of Trosti’s ledger was very impressive. If he had made any mistakes or taken any steps along another road, such were buried and forgotten.
So had Vegan Trosti lived, a power about whose person practically nothing was known. He shunned publicity with an almost fierce hatred. There were stories that he often worked among his own employees—especially on explorations—without their knowing it. When he disappeared, he had set up such a tight legal control of his empire, insuring that it was to be used for knowledge and general good, that he was looked upon on many worlds as a hero, almost a demigod.
How he had disappeared was not known, in spite of the investigation of the Patrol. It seemed that his deputies simply came forward some planet years back and announced that his private ship was long overdue and that they had their instructions in such a case to dissolve his holdings, carrying out his express commands. They had proceeded to do so, in spite of a bright beam of publicity allowing no concealment.
The story was that he had set off on one of his expeditions and that he had ceased to report regularly as he had always done. Following the time order he had left, his men moved to do as he wished should such a circumstance arrive.
Never had anyone learned anything about his early years. His past, beyond a certain point, was as blank as his final ending. He was a comet that had shot across the inhabited galaxy and left changes on those worlds it touched.
“We’re losing altitude,” Meshler suddenly exclaimed.
“Something else—” Once more Tau leaned forward so that his head and shoulders were close to the two before him. “See here?” His arm was a dark shadow in the dusky cabin, but what he held out for them had its own light about a dial. On the face of that, a needle quivered to the right, and from it came a buzzing, which seemed to Dane to grow even stronger.
“What—?” began Meshler.
“There is radiation ahead, radiation of the same type but stronger than that from the box on the Queen. I think we are going to have some answers to questions shortly.”
“Listen—” Dane could not see the ranger’s face. It was only a lightish blur in the gloom, but there was a note in the other’s voice he had not heard before. “You say this radiation turns a thing back through time, retrogresses it—”
“All we have is the evidence of the embryos and the brach,” Tau said.
“Well, suppose it affected us. Could it?”
“I don’t know. That box was brought on board the ship by a human. Thorson saw it being handled by an alien woman. Of course, they may have sent their messenger on board to die, but I don’t think so. They needed the Queen to ferry their cargo here, and the ship could not have been handled by a crew who retrogressed as rapidly as the animals it affected. We would not have been able to come out of hyper. But if the radiation is stepped up, then I am not sure—”