A Gift For Terra Page 3

clearly.They know about him, Andruul, and they're making their bid. CentralPatrol had better be quick and certain this time._"

  _Andruul kept his silence. But he thought. He thought Central Patrol wasgetting less efficient and more stupid every day._

  * * * * *

  It was a strange feeling; a feeling with which no human was emotionallyequipped to deal.

  Johnny looked at his flawlessly renovated ship, poised like a snub-nosedbullet against the blue-black brittleness of the Martian sky, and thenlooked behind him at the crescent-shaped formation of tracked vehiclesthat had escorted him back across the sucking red sand to this place.With each heavy-booted step away from them he closed the short distancebetween them and his ship, and there was not enough time to think aboutthe feeling. Or about the heavy sealed tube they had given him to takeback to his people.

  Usually, when a man ventured beyond the bounds of familiar existence,there was conflict. Either a struggle to win, or, immediatelyrecognizable success, with no struggle or hint of conflict at all.

  But not this. Not this success that seemed--what was the _word_?Hostile? That was ridiculous. These people were friendly. _Butsomehow--there was an empty ring--_

  Hell! They had saved his life. Rebuilt his ship. Given him the tube thatcontained transcriptions, in his own language, of every scientificsecret his people could ever hope to learn for themselves in the nextthousand years! And, they had even buried Ferris....

  Use the brains of a mature man, Johnny Love! You've pulled it offwithout even trying! The most stupendous thing any man in any age hasever pulled off ... without even trying! For God's sake don'tquestion--don't question things you don't understand! Take the creditand let the soul-searching go!

  He looked behind him again. They were still there. A special, smilingfarewell escort, watching a single, solitary figure cross a shortexpanse of sand to a towering, glistening thing of power.

  He raised a booted foot to the bottom fin-step, hauled himself up by thestern mounting rungs, hammered the outer lock stud with his gloved fistand the hatch swung open. Like a trap.

  He could feel the skin at the back of his neck tighten but he forcedhimself to ignore it. The lock cycled up to thirteen psi and the innerport swung automatically inward, and then he was inside, clambering upthe narrow ladder past the titanium alloy fuel tanks and the spiderycatwalks between them to the tiny control room in the forehull.

  He would not be waiting for Harrison and Janes. He would get the hellout of here and then radio them and let them make all the decisions fromthere. Earth for him. Home. He ached for it.

  He strapped himself in the hammock, punched the warming studs for eachengine, and there was a dull, muffled throb below him as each jumpedinto subdued life. The banks of dials that curved in front of him glowedsoftly, and he started an almost automatic blast-off check. It tooktwelve precious minutes.

  Then he was ready. Scanners on, heat up ... ready.

  The Martian sky was like frozen ink above him and his hands were wetinside his gloves and there was a choking dryness in his throat._Now...._

  And he could not move. There was a sudden, awful nausea and his headspun, and before his eyes there spread a bleeding Earth; the sun dimmed,and fertile plains were cast in sudden shadow.... The air chilled, theshadow spread, and there were skeletons reaching upward to a puffy,leaden sky!

  _And Earth was no longer what Men had built!_

  Then the horror in his head was gone, and he felt an awful pressure oneach side of it. His hands ... he had been pressing with insane strengthat both sides of his skull as if to crush it with his bare hands.... Hisface was wet, and he was breathing, choking, in strangling gulps.

  A scanner alarm clanged.

  He forced his eyes to focus on the center screen.

  "Earthman! Emergency! There has been a flaw discovered in the repair ofyour ship! Do not blast off! Do not...."

  The other image caught him as his arm was in mid-flight toward thecontrol bank. Sweet and warm ... the fertile plains mounting theirgolden fruits to a mellowed sun, and beyond the distant gently-rollinghills spread the resplendent city, and there were other cities....

  But his arm kept going, its muscles loose, and it fell. Heavily.Squarely on the stud-complex toward which its fist had been aimed asplit-second before.

  The engines roared, and the ship lurched upward from the red sand.

  * * * * *

  _The command flicked into the Captain's brain like a lash of ice._

  "_Slaazar! Converge, sheaf!_"

  "_Converging, sir...." It would be no use, of course. If the high brasshad been content to rely on the beams rather than on their own subtletyin the first place, the Earthman would never have fallen prey to theNomads, even for a second. But they had wanted to be as forthright aspossible--force, they said, would only arouse suspicion. Psibeam unitsonly as a last resort.... The lowliest Patrol Lancer could have toldthem the folly of that!_

  _Hastily, Slaazar issued orders to his battery crews tracking theascending Spaceship, their units already nearing overload potential. Butthe desert-scum would see some real psi-power now! They'd see it wastedcompletely if they saw it at all.... Because they'd outmaneuvered thebrass again!_

  "_Convergence impossible, sir._"

  _As he had expected._

  "_Colonel Truul, this is Captain Slaazar. Target has passed criticalplanetary curvature. Convergence impossible. Standing by, sir._"

  _For several moments after that, the thin atmosphere of Mars was warmeda little...._

  * * * * *

  Acceleration blackout had not been total; leaving Mars was even easierthan leaving the surface of Earth for the orbits of the Stations. Butthere was a period of no-thought, no-time, no-being. And then fullconsciousness seeped back slowly. But not as it was supposed to.

  Johnny Love knew he had come to because he could see the bankedinstruments glowing palely before him; because he could realize fromreading them that his ship was doing its job to perfection. Almost readyto complete the blast-off ogee, and--

  Angrily he belted the scanner switches off and the dull red sphere fadedfrom the viewplates.

  And he could feel the sweat start again all over his body. No, thereturning consciousness was all wrong.... All wrong, and the imagewouldn't go away....

  Red desert he had seen before, yet had not seen. There were dark ridgesof brown-green at its horizon; oddly-formed crater-places that mightonce have held placid lakes. And on all the vast surface there was nohint of the Patrol tracks, no sign of--anything.

  But he had to descend to the place.

  He did not know how to locate it, but the image told him that it did notmatter. The image said merely that he must begin cutting his power.

  There was no strength in his arms and hands, yet they moved in front ofhim as though things detached from his body; skillfully, surely, playingdeftly across the colored studs.

  Scanners on. Scanners on, kid....

  He watched the screens again, unconscious of what his fingers did on thepanels. The dull red sphere loomed large once more. The picture wasoff-center; without knowing what he did he rectified course with the bowjets; it was centered again. But it was a different place. Still thedesert, but with ridges of brown-green at its horizon; oddly-formedcrater-places....

  It was coming up fast, now; faster, until the horizon was only a gentlearc against a thin span of blackness, and the rest was cold red.

  Hardly knowing what he did, his fingers suddenly raced over the controlconsole, even before the scanner-alarms began their ear-splittingclanging!

  The ship lurched into a direction-change that threatened to wrench thehull apart, and the picture in the scanner reeled crazily. He knew hisown brain was not dictating the commands of control to his fingertips,nor was it evaluating for itself the madly fluctuating values indicatedon the panels. A human brain could not have done it, he knew that....

  He had cut pow
er. At least there was no power. He was falling at a crazyangle and the desert was rushing up now, hurtling up to smash him.They'd hit him, then, yet he'd felt nothing....

  It was getting hot. His hull must be glowing, now, even in the thinatmosphere of Mars--it was a long fall. Slower than a fall on Earth,through thinner air layers, yet he was glowing like a torch.

  The ocean of sand rushed up.

  And suddenly his left hand rammed the full-power stud.

  It was as though he'd been hit from behind with all the brute force ofsome gigantic fist, and there were two things. There was thesplit-second glimpse of a crescent formation suddenly wheeling towardhim and there was the clang of the scanner-alarm. There were those twothings his brain registered before the titanic force of full powersqueezed consciousness from it and left him helpless.

  * * * * *

  He was running. In a nightmare of a dead planet that was not dead, heran, away from something.

  That was how his consciousness returned. While he ran. He stopped,stumbling, turned to look behind