Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (47 page)

The stud went down a second time. A terrific blast of orange-white flame spouted from the rear end. The resulting roar deafened everyone for a mile around but inside the ship it sounded as nothing more than a high moan.

Yammering steadily on, the radio continued with sadistic gusto, “.. . but where the said
crime
incorporates
illegal
use of police and customs exemptions the
penalty 
on conviction shall be not less than
four times
that prescribed in sub-section D7 without prejudice to any
further
increases given hereunder in sub-sections—”

Switching the radio to reverse the flow of language, Raven snapped back, “Look, chum, nobody can
live
that
long!”

Cutting both transmitter and receiver, he slid the off-lever forward and shot away on a column of fire.

A million miles out he set the auto-pilot, examined his rear view screens for evidence of pursuit. There were no signs of any. The likelihood of being chased from Venus was small because futile. Ships had yet to be built capable of catching up with the kind he was using.

It was remotely possible but not probable that some vessel already in the void might be ordered to try to intercept him. But the broad gulf between Earth and Venus was not crammed with boats at this particular stage of interplanetary development.

The forward screens and detectors showed nothing noteworthy ahead except one pinpoint of infrared radiation too far away to identify. Probably the
Fantôme 
homeward bound. She should be somewhere around that region right now.

Content to let the auto-pilot do the routine work, he sat awhile in the tiny control cabin and surveyed the awesome spread of the cosmos. His air was that of one who has seen it a thousand times and hopes to see it ten thousand more. He could never grow weary of its tremendous splendor.

Nevertheless he left the sparkling view, lay in the tiny bunk and closed his eyes— but not to sleep. He shut them the better to open his mind and listen as he had never done when listening to the secret thoughts of ordinary men. The vessel’s steady purring did not distract him in the slightest, neither did the rare
psst!
and momentary flare of colliding particles of cosmic dust. For the time being his receptivity of the audio-band had ceased to exist while his mind stretched higher listening powers to the utmost.

They could just be heard, the sounds he was seeking, if one overcame one’s fleshly muffling by straining hard enough and concentrating sufficiently. Eerie mental voices vibrating through the endless dark. Many of these mysterious impulses lacked amplitude, had flattened wave-forms and had become greatly attenuated by travel across illimitable distances. Others were stronger because relatively nearer, but still far, far away.

“Black ship making for Zaxsis. We are letting it run without hindrance.”

“They are about to leave for Baldur 9, a red dwarf with four planets, all sterile. They consider this one a dead loss and aren’t likely to come back.”

“Spurned the planet but grabbed the largest satellite because it is rich in heliotrope crystals.”

“Came down with a squadron of forty and searched the place from pole to pole. Seemed in a great hurry.”

“. . . off Hero, giant blue-white in sector twelve of Andromeda. One hundred eighty black ships traveling fast in three fan formations of sixty apiece. A real Deneb expedition!”

“This Deneb made an emergency landing with two tubes busted. He waggled his palps until we understood and helped him do repairs. We acted plausibly stupid, of course. He was grateful in a superior way. Gave the kids several strings of rainbow beads and went away without suspecting.”

“Black ship of cruiser type was heading straight for Tharre. We muddled its pilots’ minds and turned it back.”

“Think he got the notion intuitively but had no way of proving it right. He was dangerously close to the truth and didn’t know it. But he liked the idea well enough to make it the basis of a new religion. It might have created an explosive situation if the Denebs had picked up some of that theology. So we destroyed it at the very start by translating him to his next stage and mourning with his kind.”

“Enormous black battleship holding eight thousand Denebs has taken possession of a lesser moon. Said they’d send a picket-boat to swap trade with us once in a while but they’re not enthusiastic. They have seen us—and all they’ve seen is a gang of backward aborigines.”

“. . . long string of a dozen in hot pursuit. Funny how they can’t resist chasing the uncatchable.”

“Well, I’m all right but she is old and gray and wants out. The years go by the same for us as for those over whom we watch. So if some other couple—”

“. . . clustered all over this asteroid giving them the hearty come-on and the Denebs fell for it as usual. They came whooping up and blasted the rock to dust and went away happy. We never did like that rock; it had a very eccentric—”

“The convoy streamed straight past making for the Horse’s Head, sector seven, but dropped this half wrecked lifeboat containing one ancient and bleary Deneb. He says he’ll stick around and prospect for crystals while the others go on looking for what is right under his elastic nose.”

“Armada of eight hundred ships setting out from Scoria to avenge that pair that disappeared. They have shielded the pilots’ brains with platinum casques and have new type force projectors installed on every ship. Somebody means business!”

“Made up their minds to play safe and char the world all over merely because the wave-lattice creatures inhabiting it are shiny, only semi-visible and suspiciously un-Deneblike. We couldn’t allow that! So we tickled the load in their armory. It made a mess!”

Ham radio had nothing on this for it was neither radio nor amateur: it was long-range
beamed
telepathy and decidedly professional.

The babble continued through the whole trip. A black ship here, another there, a hundred hell-bent for somewhere else. Denebs were doing this, Denebs were doing that, landing on some worlds, departing from others, ignoring a good many more, sometimes craftily attracted toward one, sometimes dexterously turned away from another, all the time helped or thwarted by this widespread host of faraway entities according to the unknown rules of an unknown game.

By and large the Denebs seemed to discard most worlds either at first sight or after a brief stay, yet still they kept on searching, poking, probing through an enormous area, methodically or non-methodically combing the cosmos for what they could not find. If one thing could be positively determined about them it was that they were incurable fidgets.

Raven spent all his time either listening to this talk from the great deeps of infinity or gazing through the fore observation port at the unending concourse of stars. Now and again his eyes held an abstract quality and into his face came an expression suggestive of a curious hunger. All thoughts of Thorstern, Wollencott, Carson, Heraty and the rest had been put aside; their ambitions and rivalries were of submicroscopic insignificance when compared with mightier events elsewhere.

“The Denebs picked a hundred thousand minds before they decided the years aren’t long enough to permit a search through five hundred millions. So they have gone. They’ve departed as ignorant as when they arrived.”

“. . . sat around for three full circumsolars. They clucked with patronizing amusement over our rocketships, even borrowed a couple to play with and handed them back with thanks. But when you crashed that cruiser they’d sent in pursuit of you, they became really hot and took off after you like—”

“There is a distinct trend toward Bootes for some reason best known to themselves. Better be ready for them coming that way!”

“Laethe, Morcin, Elstar, Gnosst, Weltenstile, Va, Perie, and Klain. Between two and ten thousand Denebs on each, all seeking rare minerals. They treat the local life-forms as tame but useless animals, throw them uneatable tit-bits. All the same, they’ve been extremely jumpy since—”

“Nine ships coming down, acting like they’re full of their usual suspicion.”

It went on and on and on, unhearable to all but minds naturally equipped for the purpose. No pawn-mind could detect them. No Deneb mind, either. Atmosphere blanketed the telepathic beams, and the warps around giant suns bent them a little, had to be estimated and taken into consideration. But in free space, transmitting to suitable receivers correctly attuned, almost all of them got through.

They told of lonely suns and scattered planets and gypsy asteroids as familiarly as mere man could mention the commonplace features of his home town. They identified locales, gave precise sector references and named a thousand names— but not once did any of them mention Terra, Venus, Mars or any of the family of King Sol.

There was no need to refer to any of these worlds for their time had not yet come.

A couple of six-seater police boats jumped off the Moon and tried to follow the stolen courier on its way in. They were out of luck. It plunged at Terra as if it had fifty light-years yet to run, shot sidewise when far ahead of the pursuit, vanished over the planet’s eastward rim. By the time the others curved round to that hemisphere the boat had landed and become lost in more scenery than twelve pairs of eyes could scrutinize.

It reposed on a rocky moor where another take-off would damage nobody’s property. Raven stood by its cooling tail and studied the sky awhile but the police boats did not appear above the horizon. Probably they were zooming disconsolately three or four hundred miles to the east or west.

Crossing thick heather, he reached a dirt road, went to the farmhouse he’d noted when coming down. He used its phone to call an antigrav which arrived in short time from the nearest village. Within an hour he was at the headquarters of Terran Intelligence.

As long-faced and lugubrious as ever, Carson signed to a seat, put hands together as if about to pray, and spoke with his mind.

“You’re a prime headache. You’ve given me more work to do in a week than usually I get in a month.”

“How about the work you gave
me?”

“That wasn’t so tough by the looks of it. You walked out of here and you’ve walked back with your tie straight and your nose blown. In between times you’ve annoyed important people and scared the wits out of others. You have thumbed your beak at every existing law and now I’ve got to cover up your misdeeds, somehow, heaven alone knows how.”

“I haven’t busted every law,” Raven denied. “There are some intact. I have yet to distill ten gallons of
tambar
out in the hills. What I’d like to know is this:
are 
you covering me up? The Moon patrols took after me on my way in despite my using a courier boat.”

“A stolen one.” Carson nodded aggrievedly at a thick bunch of papers on his desk. “You create crime faster than I can whitewash it. I am trying to whitewash that courier right now. But don’t worry. The worry is all mine. Some folk seem to think it’s the sort of thing I’m paid for. So I’ve got to find a way to turn this barefaced pinch into an officially permitted borrowing.” He rubbed his chin, looked rueful. “And don’t you dare tell me you smashed it to bits on landing. Where have you stashed it?”

Raven told him, adding, “I’d have brought it straight into the spaceport but for those cops trying to sit on my neck. Their chase made it look as if I was wanted. Lately I’ve been wanted quite enough to do me for a time.”

“I’ll have a pilot pick it up and bring it in.” Carson poked the papers away from him. “Woe, woe, all I get is woe.”

“Running from Venus to here takes quite a while even in a superfast courier boat,” Raven pointed out. “So I’ve lost touch with local affairs. What’s happened to provide the woe?”

Carson said, “Last week we killed two characters caught in the act of trying to destroy an important bridge. Both proved to be Mars-born. Next day a power station went sky-high, plunged ten towns into darkness and stopped industry over a hundred square miles. On the Saturday we found an ingenious contraption planted at the foot of a dam and snatched it away in the nick of time. If it had exploded the result would have amounted to a major disaster.”

“Then haven’t they—?”

“On the other hand,” Carson went on, ignoring him, “scientists now report that the Baxter blowup almost certainly was a genuine accident. They say the fuel proves to be highly unstable in certain exceptional and unforeseen conditions. They claim to have found a cure already.”

“That’s something worth knowing.”

Carson made a gesture of impatience. “It’s once in a blue moon I get an authoritative report like that and until I do I’m compelled to regard every accident as something possibly and probably deliberate. We have been handicapped all along the line by inability to distinguish human error from sabotage. Why, we can’t even get rid of suspects. We are still holding eight of them taken from that underground dump. Mars or Venus-born skewboys, every one of them. If I had my way I’d deport them and prohibit their re-entry, but it can’t be done. Legally they are Terrans, see?”

“Yes, that’s the trouble.” Raven leaned forward over the desk. “Do you mean to tell me that this war is still continuing?”

“No. I won’t go so far as to say that. It certainly was continuing up to end of last week but maybe it is now ended.” He surveyed the other speculatively. “Day before yesterday Heraty came along to tell me our worries are now finished. Since then there have been no reports of further incidents. I don’t quite know what you’ve done or how you have done it, but it has been effective
if
what Heraty says is true.”

“You have heard nothing about a man named Thorstern?”

“I have.” He shifted uneasily in his chair but kept command of his thoughts. “For a long time we’ve had Intelligence operatives hanging around Wollencott, said to be the leader of Venusian insurgents. Eventually two of them sent in reports saying that this Thorstern was the real driving force behind the movement but they weren’t able to dig up convincing evidence in support. It seems this Thorstern goes around tastefully attired in several layers of legality and nobody can prove a darned thing unless he strips.”