The Golden People Page 6

  No pattern was apparent. Within the Field, the law of complex machines was Chaos. Hope for the life of Chief Planeteer Golden, never bright, faded again; it seemed that the complicated mechanism of his ejection capsule could never have carried him free of his falling scoutship.

  Any forcefields that the explorers from Earth were capable of generating simply ceased to exist at the boundary of the Field. And beyond that border, many non-biological chemical reactions, especially the more complex ones, could not be induced to conduct themselves properly.

  Over there, atomic clocks and power supplies failed quite dependably, as if their impelling isotopes had been turned to lead. Over there, a fusion power lamp flared out like a cheap candle—some-one wrote that as a note and then deleted it. Un the contrary, a cheap candle over there burned perfectly well. Yet the high-tech devices could always be made to resume proper operation again as soon as they were pulled out of the Field; and counters in the Stem picked up faint normal background radiation, probably from natural sources, coming from across the border.

  Over there, fire burned as always, when kindled in wood or grass by lightning or by human hands, employing primitive means. Over there, animals and plants and people lived, and lightning darted when a rainstorm came. Nature and primitive invention alike appeared to be quite unperturbed by the Field's presence. Only the advanced technology of the explorers from Earth was affected.

  Some of those explorers concentrated their observations on the native branch of humanity. Men, women, and children were seen at a distance, repeatedly moving from Stem to Field and back again, without the least visible awareness of any change, or even of the fact that any boundary at all existed. Of course the native humans wore no groundsuits, complex with valves and circuits, and depended upon no machines more advanced than the knife or the bow.

  The local people fled at every tentative approach of an explorer. The explorers did not try at all to press the issue. Brazil and his people had plenty to do as it was. Diplomacy, for the time being, could wait.

  No objection was offered to the presence of the explorers; the hypothetical Field-builders failed to materialize. After several days Grodsky brought down his flagship to a mere fifty thousand kilometers or so above the Stem, and the distance lag in communication between the flagship and its people on the surface practically disappeared.

  The odd Ringwall structure around on the other side of the planet, antipodal to the Stem, remained a mystery. New photos of the Ringwall taken from just above the Field at that point showed essentially no more than the first pictures of it had shown. The Ringwall was an irregular polygon of mountainous cliffs, several kilometers across, above which the lower atmosphere seemed always to be hazy enough to blur detail. If it was indeed to be classified as architecture, there was no other building on Golden anywhere near its size. Neither were there sizable cities anywhere on the planet, or large ocean-going ships, or cities big enough to make space-farers' beacons in the night.

  There came at last a lull in the explorers' efforts to gather still more data, a pause while human brains and computers tried to digest the mass of detailed information they had so far accumulated. Brazil and almost his entire planeteering crew went up to attend a meeting on Alpha One, leaving just Adam Mann and Kwame Chun Lui, with a single scoutship, on the surface of the planet.

  "You're the boss until I get back this afternoon," Colonel Brazil told Adam on departure. The Colonel glowered. "May the mighty spirits protect our cause on Golden."

  Adam and Chun Lui were not to remain idle. They began hopping in the scout around the perimeter of the Stem, following a circular path more than a hundred and fifty kilometers in diameter, repeating earlier tests with probes and meters to see if anything about the Field had changed since the tests began. There was no sign that it had.

  Shortly after midday, Adam looked up from his drudgery with marker poles and electric probes, and commented: "More of the damned things."

  A hundred meters away, on the other side of the boundary, three geryons had just come over a hilltop. Now another of the beasts appeared on the hill, and presently two more came into view at one side of it.

  "They're after something," said Adam. "That's how they hunt anything bigger than a rabbit—in a pack." He had been watching them whenever he could, beyond his normal duties of observation; he felt a kind of private fascination.

  "After us, maybe?" Chun Lui wondered. The geryons' dead-looking yellow eyes were turned down the hill in the general direction of the two men.

  "Maybe they are. All right, let's go back to the ship for a while. I wouldn't care to start messing around with weapons right here at the edge of the Field."

  "Roger." Chun Lui pulled firmly on the rope that he was holding. The rope's other end was tied around the ankle of a humanoid robot, and the robot lay fallen on its face just beyond the line of marking poles that defined the Stem-Field border. One of the routine tests now used was to send the robot walking into the Field and haul it out after the inevitable collapse. Someone in one of the departments on the flagship had evidently thought it would be an informative procedure. Now, as soon as Chun Lui had dragged the heavy metal body back into the Stem, animation returned to it. The man-shaped thing climbed to its feet and took an unsteady step back toward the boundary.

  "Halt, Otto," Chun Lui ordered in a crisp voice. The machine stopped in its tracks obediently. Its lenses, halfway eyelike projections on the front of its head, moved slightly, watching the animals on the hill.

  "Carry this back to the scout, Otto." Adam told it. "And these things." The robot turned, picked up the indicated equipment, and strode purposefully toward the scoutship, which waited about forty meters inside the Stem.

  Adam and Chun Lui followed, carrying the rest of the gear and looking back over their shoulders. The geryons were now moving slowly toward them in a spread-out line.

  "Hey, it's not us they're after," said Chun Lui when the walking men had almost reached the scoutship. "Looks like they've caught—" His eyes went wide behind his faceplate, and he stopped so suddenly that Adam almost walked into him.

  Adam spun around, just as the machine called Otto hurtled past him, running faster than any man could run, accelerating like a racing motorcycle back toward the boundary of the Field. Fifty meters beyond that boundary the geryons were now ringed around a native child who danced in panic, looking too terrified to scream. The robot's programmed compulsion to protect human life drove it toward the animals, into the Field. At the boundary it instantly collapsed again, tumbling forward in the grass with its momentum.

  Adam was only vaguely aware of hearing the first excited comments from Alpha One. Already he had turned and barked to Chun Lui: "Get in the scout and man the turret!" Then he took off running back toward the animals on the hill, the servo-powered legs of the groundsuit churning him forward as fast as any unburdened human sprinter.

  He stopped only a couple of paces before he reached the Field. The heavy machine pistol, as if by itself, had already come out of the holster and into his armored hand. Fifty meters up the slope the child—looked like a little girl—was trying to dodge out of the geryons' circle, but the gray bodies moved with graceless, efficient speed to block her in. Adam could see the irregular white teeth in the girl's open mouth, and hear her thin wailing cry.

  He thumbed the pistol's safety off and locked the optical sight onto the largest geryon as it moved. He fired a burst that should have torn its backbone out. The tracers snuffed out when they hit the Field, and thin trails of smoke curved down into the grass not far beyond the boundary. There was a faint pattering disturbance on the far side of the line, as if he had tossed a handful of gravel over.

  The geryons ignored the demonstration. The largest of them had caught the child's arm in its teeth now, and Adam could see the blood. The others hovered ponderously, as if impatiently waiting their turns to bite.

  "Fire the turret!" Adam shouted. "For effect!" It occurred to him that main turret fire might kill
the child, too, if indeed the beams managed to break through the Field at all. But to try it looked like the only chance.

  "What's going on?" General Grodsky's voice asked loudly in Adam's helmet. Then that voice was drowned in a burst of noise, as the sharp, nearly invisible beams stabbed out from the scoutship's main turret. The air thundered around Adam, and his armor glowed in the mighty splash of heat that billowed up and down the Field's surface from the point where the beams struck it. On the Stem side, the grass at Adam's feet went up in smoke, while centimeters away, across the invisible barrier, the blades stood green and fresh.

  Several of the animals on the hillside turned their heads and looked toward the scoutship, as if the sound of the blast had annoyed them.

  "The siren!" Adam shouted. "Turn the siren on!"

  Another geryon had caught the child in its teeth now, and was nibbling at her delicately. Her rising scream was drowned with all other sounds when the scoutship's siren climbed to a full-volume howl. Adam turned off his air mikes, and realized that Grodsky was shouting questions at him.

  "Native attacked by animals, inside the Field," he called back. "We're trying to help."

  Adam did not really hear what the General said next. The effort to help was not succeeding. The siren did not greatly distract the beasts. Now Chun Lui was trying an optical laser in their eyes, but the beam began to diffuse as soon as it hit the Field. The geryons snarled and squinted and turned their heads away from the glaring light. They kept on with what they were doing, like starving animals at food.

  But it was not food they wanted, only bloody sport. Adam caught another glimpse, between massive gray bodies, of the child, and could see only too well that she still lived.

  If he entered the Field in his groundsuit, valves would malfunction and he would collapse at once, unable to breathe. He brought an arm in from its groundsuit sleeve and had two fasteners loose inside his helmet when the General's voice blasted at him: "Mann, what are you doing?"

  "Going up there."

  "No! That's an order! Fasten your helmet!"

  A third fastener fell loose. "There's nothing else left to try."

  "Chun Lui, stop him! Stun him!"

  Adam dashed toward the Field, which he expected would protect him from stunbeams. Once across the border, he would have to get his helmet off very quickly, to let himself breathe, then run up the hill and distract the animals. And get the girl to the scout. There might be some chance yet—

  The paralyzing beam from the scoutship struck him before he could reach the line of marker poles, and the grassy ground swung heavily up to hit his faceplate. His groundsuit was poor protection against the scout's heavy projector at this close range. But somehow he rolled on one side, reached out an arm. If he could drag himself across… it was surprising that he could move at all…

  The beam struck him again, and his body went dead as ice. The last thing Adam saw before darkness came was a geryon looking down the hill at him, frowning haughtily, displaying red-stained teeth.

  Chapter Seven

  Alice was holding out her arms toward him, crying for his help. But Adam could not reach her, because the terrible fight in the playground was still going on and he was still trapped in it, pinned up against the wall that was covered with painted murals, unable to break free. Then he was flat on his back. Strangers with hate-filled faces had surrounded him; they were looking down at Adam and shouting hate, for he was somehow odd or different. They kicked at Adam and he tried to hit back at them, but his arms had gone heavy and numb and useless. Then the faces were gone, all of them except one—

  —the face of Kwame Chun Lui, who was bending over him. Adam was lying on his back in his bunk in the scoutship. His helmet and groundsuit had been removed. He could tell from the way the ship felt around him, and from the quality of background sounds, that the ship was still parked on the surface.

  "Wha—" He sat up with a grunt, and then almost toppled over sideways before he discovered that he was still half-paralyzed. "Uh. How long—?"

  "You've been out about an hour," said Chun Lui. Standing back a pace from the bunk now, components from the scoutship's medical kit in hand, he looked relieved and at the same time a bit wary. "I had to do it, Ad. Good thing Otto still had that line tied to his ankle; I reeled him in, and he carried you in through decontamination."

  Adam said something vulgar, and let himself flop back on the bunk. He added an obscenity, and repeated it several times. "Why didn't you use that damned thing on them instead of on me?"

  Chun Lui's voice was quiet. "Well, I tried it on them, Ad. It did no more good than the main burner."

  Adam swore aimlessly once more, and then made another effort to sit up, this time with somewhat better success. He sat there on the edge of his bunk, stamping his feet, trying to rub and flex the woodenness out of his thick arms. There had been a chance, some kind of a chance, to help the kid, and they had stopped him. It was all he could think of.

  The large communication screen on the bulkhead lit up, with General Grodsky's image glaring sourly out of it at him. "Well, Mann. Since you disobey orders, I presume you possess some information about the conditions there that you didn't have time to explain to me. Let's have it."

  Adam stared back doggedly. "Sir. I just wanted to help that kid."

  "You think I didn't want to help her?" The screen seemed to vibrate slightly with the volume of the General's voice. Then the volume dropped, but the hardness grew. "What was your next step going to be, exactly?"

  "I was… going to go on up the hill, sir. To do what I could."

  "What you could." Grodsky almost smiled, projecting mock satisfaction now. "Would you outline for me, please, just what that was going to be?"

  All right, he was in trouble. Adam told himself that he didn't give a damn. Yet he did, but what else could he have done?

  He replied to the General: "Distract the animals. Try and get the little girl away from them. Try to get her downhill to the scout again. Where we could give her medical attention."

  "How many of those animals were there?"

  "Half a dozen, maybe. Sir."

  "And you were going up there unarmed, to take their prey away from them." The General made it sound totally insane. Well, maybe it had been insane. No doubt it had. All Adam knew was that he had been unable to keep from trying. If the situation came up again, he'd have to try again.

  The volume of Grodsky's transmitted voice had decreased now by another level, but the tone had become if anything more vicious. "That Field you were so eager to enter, that air you were so anxious to breathe, are still completely unknown in terms of what their effects on an Earth-descended human being will be. Did you learn nothing at all on Killcrazy? Wasn't everything there innocent and peaceful in the first days of exploration? Are you utterly stupid, Mann? We've already lost one planeteer here, and I don't—"

  "How about that little girl?" Adam heard himself shouting back. "Does she fit on your scorecard anywhere?"

  Violence appeared behind Grodsky's angry eyes. The possibility loomed suddenly, real as a brandished club, that a commanding General's awesome authority in the field was about to be invoked with crushing impact. Adam was suddenly afraid. He knew that the General would have been legally justified in ordering him shot, for disobedience in the field. He wouldn't be shot now, of course; the emergency was over, the situation stabilized. But he might be tried and imprisoned. He might be kicked out of the Space Force. He might be sent back to Earth to some meaningless desk job. Damn it, he had done what was right, and would do it again. But the girl was dead by now, and he wasn't, and he was getting a little scared.

  But the General's club of authority—though it had been figuratively lifted from his shoulder—did not strike. Grodsky, as though with the purpose of impressing everyone with the need for caution and control, made his own anger disappear. Adam had observed before, with a touch of envy, how the high brass all seemed to be able to do that.

  General Grodsky, his o
wn intentions now as well hidden as a poker hand, asked Adam in a controlled voice: "Have you got anything more to say?"

  Adam drew a deep breath. "Sir, apart from humanitarian considerations, it could help us to get on with the natives, to have pulled one of them out of trouble."

  "Sure it could," said Grodsky, not impressed for a moment. "Or, that girl might have been a ritual sacrifice, and saving her might have ruined our chances to get on, as you put it—apart from humanitarian considerations. But that's not the main point. The main point right now is that when I give an order it must be followed."

  "Yessir," said Adam, meekly. He was beginning to dare to hope that he might survive. "If I was wrong, I… was wrong."

  "You were wrong, dammit."

  "Yessir…"

  "But what?"

  "But… I was left in command down here, General, and there occurred what I judged to be an emergency, and I took what steps I thought were best."

  There was a silence, long enough for Chun Lui to put in a few words. "Sir, with the turret firing and all, it's possible we didn't hear all of the General's spoken orders very clearly at the time."

  Adam nodded. At the same time, Colonel Brazil, for once no trace of humor in his long, bony face, appeared behind Grodsky on the screen.

  The General was considering the situation silently. Then he said: "I'm reserving judgment, for the time being, on the incident that's just happened. We'll carry on from where we are."

  There was a little silence. Then after a moment Chun Lui said: "Sir, I think sooner or later we're going to have to fight off those beasts in self-defense. More and more of them keep hanging around, watching us. And they seem to build up their courage in large groups."

  Grodsky nodded, confirming that the chewing-out was going to be allowed to turn into a planning session. The tension in the atmosphere drained rapidly as the General turned around. "Boris, those animals do seem devilish hard to frighten, don't they? Of course we can defend ourselves against them within the Stem, but I want to hold the killing of any native fauna to a minimum, at least until we know—"