Plague Ship by Andre Norton (best free e reader TXT) 📕

jagged rock teeth was the bubble of the E-Stat housing⁠—more than three-quarters of it being in the hollowed-out sections below the surface of the miniature world which supported it, as Dane knew. But a beam of light shone from the dome to center on the grounded Queen. They had not caught the Stat agents napping.

They made the rounds of the spacer, checking on each of the semiconscious men. Ali had ready the artificial oxgy tanks⁠—they must move fast once they began the actual task of clearing and restocking the hydro.

“Hope you have a good story ready,” he commented as the other three joined him by the hatch to don the suits which would enable them to cross the airless, heatless surface of the asteroid.

“We have a poisoned hydro,” Dane said.

“One look at the plants we dump will give you the lie. They won’t accept our story without investigation.”

Dane was aroused. Did Ali think he was a stupid as all that? “If you’d take a look in there now you’d believe me,” he snapped.

“What did you do?” Ali sounded genuinely interested.

“Chucked a heated can of lacoil over a good section. It’s wilting down fast in big patches.”

Rip snorted. “Good old lacoil. You drink it, you wash in it, and now you kill off the Hydro with it. Maybe we can give the company an extra testimonial for the official jabber and collect when we hit Terra. All right⁠—Weeks,” he spoke to the little man, “you listen in on the com⁠—it’s tuned to our helmet units. We’ll climb into these pipe suits and see how many tears we can wring out of the Eysies with our sad, sad tale.”

They got into the awkward, bulky suits and squeezed into the hatch while Weeks slammed the lock door at their backs and operated the outer opening. Then they were looking out across the ground, still showing signs of the heat of their landing, and lighted by the dome beam.

“Nobody hurrying out with an aid and comfort kit,” Rip’s voice sounded in Dane’s earphones. “A little slack aren’t they?”

Slack⁠—or was it that the Eysies had recognized the Queen and was preparing the sort of welcome the remnant of her crew could not withstand? Dane, wanting very much in his heart to be elsewhere, climbed down the ladder in Rip’s wake, both of them spotlighted by the immovable beam from the Stat dome.

XI Desperate Measures

Measured in distance and time that rough walk in the ponderous suits across the broken terrain of the asteroid was a short one; measured by the beating of his own heart, Dane thought it much too long. There was no sign of life by the air lock of the bubble⁠—no move on the part of the men stationed there to come to their assistance.

“D’you suppose we’re invisible?” Ali’s disembodied voice clicked in the helmet earphones.

“Maybe we’ll wish we were.” Dane could not forgo that return.

Rip was almost to the air lock door now. His massively suited arm was outstretched toward the control bar when the com-unit in all three helmets caught the same demand:

“Identify!” The crisp order had enough snap to warn them that an answer was the best policy.

“Shannon⁠—A-A of the Polestar,” Rip gave the required information. “We claim E rights⁠—”

But would they get them? Dane wondered. There was a click loud in his ears. The metal door was yielding to Rip’s hand. At least those on the inside had taken off the lock. Dane quickened pace to join his leader.

Together the three from the Queen crowded through the lock door, saw that swing shut and seal behind them, as they stood waiting for the moment they could discard the suits and enter the dome. The odds against them could not be too high, this was a small Stat. It would not house more than four agents at the most. And they were familiar enough with the basic architecture of such stations to know just what move to make. Ali was to go to the com room where he could take over if they did meet with trouble. Dane and Rip would have to handle any dissenters in the main section. But they still hoped that luck might ride their fins and they could put over a story which would keep them out of active conflict with the Eysies.

The gauge on the wall registered safety and they unfastened the protective clasps of the suits. Standing the cumbersome things against the wall as the inner door to the lock rolled back, they walked into Eysie territory.

As Free Traders they had the advantage of being uniformly tunicked⁠—with no Company badge to betray their ship or status. So that could well be the “Polestar” standing needle-slim behind them⁠—and not the notorious “Solar Queen.” But each, as he passed through the inner lock, gave a hitch to his belt which brought the butt of his sleep rod closer to hand. Innocuous as that weapon was, in close quarters its effect, if only temporary, was to some purpose. And since they were prepared for trouble, they might have a slight edge over the Eysies in attack.

A Company man, his tunic shabby and open in a negligent fashion at his thick throat, stood waiting for them. His unhelmeted head was grizzled, his coarse, tanned face with heavy jowls bristly enough to suggest he had not bothered to use smooth-cream for some days. An under officer of some spacer, retired to finish out the few years before pension in this nominal duty⁠—fast letting down the standards of personal regime he had had to maintain on ship board. But he wasn’t all fat and soft living; the glance with which he measured them was shrewdly appraising.

“What’s your trouble?” he demanded without greeting. “You didn’t I-dent coming in.”

“Coms are out,” Rip replied as shortly. “We need E-Hydro⁠—”

“First time I ever heard it that the coms were wired in with the grass,” the Eysies’s hands were on his hips⁠—in close