The Planet Mappers by E. Everett Evans (books for new readers .TXT) 📕

the ship. "But 'Annie' says the stuffs right close."

At five miles high he leveled off and put the ship into a narrowing spiral. From that vantage point they could see that the storm was a purely localized affair, perhaps some twenty miles in diameter.

"Wonder what makes those colors?" Jak called from the telescopic-visiplate into which he was staring.

"Suppose it could be a volcano?"

"Could there be volcanic action on so cold a planet?" their mother asked in astonishment.

"I don't see how there could be," Jak answered slowly, "but that certainly looks like flames of some sort down there."

"Maybe the experts from Terra can figure it out from our color pictures," Mrs. Carver said. "I'm taking a lot of extra ones, with the variable focus lens."

"That new metal's down there, though, whatever it is. Since those other people mined it, our miners'll figure out how to get it, too, I'll bet."

"I wonder." Jak was suddenly diffident. "Don't laugh now, but do you suppose maybe those flames could be some sort of life, and that they're feeding on the metal, which you said was highly radioactive?"

"Now who's nutty?" Jon asked witheringly, while Mrs. Carver gasped at the daring concept.

"Well, some of those flames are coming higher and aiming for us." Jak tried to defend his position. "We'd have said such crystal-creatures as we found on Four were impossible, but we know they aren't and that they have some sort of—well, intelligence, from the way they tried to get our ship. So why not flame-beings?"

"Do you think they're dangerous?" Their mother's voice held a frightened note as she saw in her plate those swiftly approaching flames.

"Don't see how they could possibly hurt the ship, or us." Jon tried to speak calmly ... but he tilted the nose and the space-yacht was soon nearly ten miles high, although it still continued circling.

"Man, oh man, they're certainly beautiful!" Jak was enthralled as those bright, shining tongues of flame grew taller and taller. "There ... there does seem to be a ... a purpose in the way they act, though." His tone changed to a more anxious one.

The flames were now high above the storm of fire that constituted the main ... body? Now these tongues broke loose, and as they continued rising toward the ship they became more spherical in shape—were no longer simply extensions of the planet-based fires. And as they rose ever higher and faster, they seemed to the anxious watchers to be really thinking, intelligent entities.

"Let's move away from here," their mother pleaded. "I'm getting the feeling that they are actually pursuing us—and for no good purpose, either."

Jon touched the controls, and the ship began rising more swiftly.

"No, don't leave; I want to study ..." Jak began, but Jon interrupted him.

"So would I like to know more about them, but if Mom wants to leave, away we go." Yet there was an undercurrent of relief in his voice.

But as if guessing his intention, the flames hurtled after them at such tremendous speed that before the ship had barely begun accelerating, they were almost up to it.

"Hang on tight!" Jon yelled, and increased the acceleration. Soon the ship had left the flames behind. Peering in their telescopic plates, the three could see the flames, reluctantly and as if baffled, return at last to their home below.

"All gone, Mother. We're safe now," Jak said comfortingly.

"Thank you, God," she said devoutly and sank limply into a seat. "I was afraid for awhile...."

"So was I," Jon's teeth began chattering and his body shaking so hard that he, too, was glad he was sitting down. Now that it was all over the shock of that strangeness—that utter alienness—was hitting him. Nor was Jak in much better shape, in spite of his expressed desire to stay and study the enigmatic flame-life.

It was many minutes before the trio were able to discuss the matter calmly, and to realize they had been in actual danger.

"I see now we sure would have been, if Jon hadn't zoomed us out of there so fast," Jak said.

Finally, Mrs. Carver shook herself. "I'll go get lunch. It must be time, hungry as I feel."

"Me, too," Jon laughed. "But then, I'm always hungry."

As soon as the three had finished eating, Mrs. Carver and Jak went to sit with the invalid and watch hopefully for those semi-conscious moments which were becoming more and more frequent. Jon went back to check his course back to Planet Two, and to lounge later in the pilot's seat, studying from one of his reelbooks.

"There must be," he told himself, "some way of handling that fuel, and of storing and using it. The fact that it was cached there on Two shows that. But then, those folks who used it were so evidently far advanced in science."

A bit later the thought intruded, "Hey, if that stuff's so powerful now, after all the untold time it was stored there, what was it like when it was new?"

An hour or so later he heard his name called, urgently. He sprang up and ran into the other room, to see his brother beckoning him from the doorway of their parents' bunkroom. As he came up Jon saw his mother inside, bending over the bunk.

"Is—is Pop worse? He'd been so much better!" Jon's heart was clogging his speech.

"No, he seems to be waking up fully." Jak turned a radiant face toward him, then immediately knelt by his father's side.

Jon knelt, too, his eyes fastened on the still figure in the bed. But even as he watched, the eyelids slowly fluttered a bit, then a hand was raised to the forehead. Mr. Carver's head turned from side to side, restlessly, and then his eyes opened. They seemed to be studying each of the three watchers in turn, as well as the room in which he was lying.

"What—" The voice was low, and they strained to hear, "What happened to me?"

His wife answered quietly, "Don't you worry about that now, Dear. You were hurt and have been unconscious for some time. But now you're getting well, and I'll tell you all about it when you wake up again. Go back to sleep now. You are getting stronger that way."

Mr. Carver seemed to be weighing that advice, then to accept it. "All right," he said with an affectionate smile. He closed his eyes, and soon the rhythmic breathing told the three anxious watchers he was asleep once more.

Jon let out his breath in a happy sigh, there were tears of joy in his mother's eyes. Jak exclaimed delightedly, "He's getting well, Mother! In another day or so he'll be all right. Naturally he'd not remember clearly for a while. My textreels say people with concussions seldom do. But as soon as he gets a little stronger and those damaged places in his brain completely restore themselves, he will, you'll see."

Jon chimed in quickly, although he was not too sure of what he was saying. "It's just the shock, like Jak says. He'll snap out of it in a day or so."

She wiped her eyes on the corner of her apron, and smiled tremulously, "Of course, Boys. I ... I guess I've just been so nervous and—and he was so much more like himself this time."

"No wonder," Jon laid his hand gently on her arm. "You've been under a terrible strain, too, what with Pop sick and us boys roaming around on alien planets. But we'll be back on Two where it's more like home, and there's only a little more to be done before we can start back for Terra. Anyway, we did and are doing what had to be done to prove up Pop's claim, and we've beaten Slik Bogin, supposing he's out here trying to cheat us out of this system."

The boys went into the control room. "We'll have to figure out where to lay out our townsite, and which planet is best to put it on."

"I vote for Two," Jak said after only a moment's hesitation. "It seems the most homelike to me, and we can stand the climate so much better there. Won't have to work in suits all the time."

"Yes, that's where I wanted it, too. This is a funny system, in a way, though—there's a much greater difference in the distances between the planets than we usually find."

"Why's that?"

"Ask some astronomer, not me. Has something to do with sizes and densities, I believe—but I'm not sure even of that. Maybe it's because this sun is larger and denser than the others we've studied. I know it's almost a quarter bigger than Sol."

"Two's almost as far away from this sun as Terra is from Sol, didn't you say?"

"Yes, Earth's average is about ninety-three million miles, while Two is about eighty-seven, which accounts for its warmth. Then, near as I can figure it out, Three is lots closer than Mars, yet Five is only a little further than Jupe, and Four is between them."

"Didn't I read somewhere that Sol's Asteroid Belt is really a broken-up planet?"

"Some people think so. But nobody knows for sure, yet.

"All right, then, let's put our city on Two." Jak grinned. "Has the mastermind decided where to put it?"

"Not the exact location." Jon flushed, but grinned back. "Colonial says it must be fairly close to good water, good soil, forests, and mineral deposits, however."

He sobered and looked at his brother appealingly. "Golly, Owl, any chance of Pop getting entirely well before we have to start it, so that it wouldn't hurt him to do brainwork? I don't know very much about city planning, you know—only the specs Colonial furnished."

"He could—but maybe he won't. I don't know enough to say how soon. I've been fooled before—thought it would only take a few days, when he was first hurt."

"What about his being so ... so ... dreamy?"

"You mean, when he woke up just now? That's really nothing to worry about, honestly, just as I told you and Mother. I looked it up again, and the text says amnesiacs often act that way just before they recover full consciousness."

Jon let out his breath in relief.

"But listen," Jak changed back to the old subject. "If you don't know anything about city planning—and I don't either—how're we going to know what has to be done to satisfy the Colonial Board?"

"It's all in the papers they gave us that have to be filled out to file when we get back. It tells how much area to cover, how far apart the streets are to be and how wide, and how to mark out everything."

"Gosh, that sounds like a complicated deal. It'll take us an awful long time, won't it?"

"Not as much as you'd think. If we work really hard, I figure we should be able to do it in a couple of weeks. We just have to sketch in the bare outline, not fill it all in.

"Get out the papers, then, and we'll study them."

"Right!"

10

With the various members of the Carver family busy with their studies and chores, it did not seem long before they came close to Planet Two, and Jon laid down his reelbooks to begin preparing for the landing. He had started down through the atmosphere when Jak suddenly roused.

"Why don't we circle around a bit and look for our townsite from the air?"

"I was going to," Jon said with a disarming grin. "Just wanted to get close enough to see well before I called you in to help me decide."

At about five miles above the surface he leveled off and began circumnavigating the globe. He headed in the direction which—he remembered from their previous visit—would soonest bring them near the great ocean, but zigzagged from north to south as they proceeded eastward.

"Watch for rivers," he said. "A fairly large one that empties into the ocean."

They were about halfway between the north pole and the equator, as they had already decided the climate in that latitude would probably be the most suitably average. In a few minutes of traveling they saw ahead a plain that looked to be just what they wanted.

Quickly Jon maneuvered the ship downward and soon landed. They were just a few miles from the edge of the great ocean, at the mouth of a large river of considerable width and length, and not far from an extensive forest to the south, and a range of considerable mountains to the west.

"Hope the soil here is good," Jon commented as he locked the controls in neutral. "Everything else seems perfect."

"The spec-anal shows minerals fairly close, in those hills to the west." Jak was eagerly peering from the port.

"I know—that's why I chose this spot. Nice flat land here; good river; close to the ocean, mountains less than a hundred miles away, and not too high. Ideal place, I'd say.

"That it is; that it is. Going out today?"

"Why not?