Dark Benediction

“He right, Joe,” said Lije Henderson, Bama’s chief crony. “That mine shaff speak fo’ itself.”

“That mine’s a million years old,” Joe snorted, “and they’re not even sure it’s a mine. I said drop it.”

“That ship speak fo’ itself!”

“Drop it! This isn’t the first time a ship overshot Crater City and had to set down someplace else. Ten to one it’s full of Parliament waffle-bottoms, all complaining their heads off. Maybe they’ve got a meteor puncture and need help quick.”

The closed-circuit intercom suddenly buzzed, and Novotny turned to see the project engineer’s face on the small viewer.

“Are all your men up and dressed, Joe?” he asked when Novotny had answered the call.

“EVERYBODY PIPE DOWN! Sorry, Suds. No—well, except for Beasley, they’re up. Beasley’s logging sack time.”

“The hell Beasley is!” complained Beasley from his bunk. “With you verbing nouns of a noun all yapping like—”

“Shut up, Bee; Go on, Suds.”

“We got contact with that ship. They’ve got reactor troubles. I tried to get Crater City on the line, but there’s an outage on the circuit somewhere. I need some men to take a tractor and backtrack toward Copernicus. Look for a break in the circuit.”

“Why call me?”

“The communication team is tied up, Joe.”

“Yeah, but I’m not a communic—”

“Hell!” Brodanovitch exploded. “It doesn’t take an electronics engineer to splice a broken wire, does it?”

“OK, Suds, we’ll go. Take it easy. What about that ship?”

The engineer paused to mop his face. He looked rather bleak suddenly. “I don’t know if it’s safe to tell you. But you’ll find out anyhow. Watch out for a riot.”

“Not a runaway reactor—”

“Worse, Joe. Women.”

“WOMEN!” It was a high piping scream from Beasley. “Did he say women?” Beasley was out of bed and into his boots.

“WOMEN!” They came crowding around the intercom screen.

“Back off!” Novotny barked. “Go on, Suds.”

“It’s a troupe of entertainers, Joe. Clearance out of Algiers. They say they’re scheduled for a performance in Crater City, come nightfall. That’s all I know, except they’re mostly women.”

“Algiers! Jeez! Belly dancers… The room was a confused babble.

“Wait a minute,” said Suds. His face slid off the screen as he talked to somebody in the boss tank. Moments later he was back. “Their ship just put down, Joe. Looks like a safe landing. The rescue team is out there. You’ll pass the ship on the way up the line. Get moving.”

“Sure, Suds.” Novotny switched off and looked around at the sudden scramble. “I’ll be damned if you do!” he yelled. “You can’t all go. Beasley, Henderson—”

“No, bigod you don’t, Joe!” somebody howled. “Draw straws!”

“OK. I can take three of you, no more.”

They drew. Chance favored Relke, Braxton, and Henderson. Minutes later they crowded into the electric runabout and headed southeast along the line of stately steel towers that filed back toward Copernicus. The ship was in sight. Taller than the towers, the nacelles of the downed bird rose into view beyond the broken crest of a distant lava butte. She was a freight shuttle, space-constructed and not built for landing on Earth. Relke eyed the emblem on the hull of her crew nacelle while the runabout nosed onto the strip of graded roadbed that paralleled the transmission line back to Crater City. The emblem was unfamiliar.

“That looks like the old RS Voltaire,” said the lineman. “Somebody must have bought her, Joe. Converted her to passenger service.”

“Maybe. Now keep an eye on the telephone line.”

The pusher edged the runabout toward the trolley rods. The overhead power transmission line had been energized by sections during the construction of it, and the line was hot as far as the road had been extended. Transformer stations fed energy from the 200 kilovolt circuit into the 1,500 volt trolley bars that ran down the center of the roadbed. Novotny stopped the vehicle at the end of the finished construction and sidled it over until the feeler arms crackled against the electrified bus rods and locked in place. He switched the batteries to “charge” and drove on again.

“Relke, you’re supposed to be watching that talk circuit, not the ship.”

“OK, Joe, in a minute.”

“You horny bastard, you can’t see their bloomers through that titanium hull. Put the glasses down and watch the line.”

“OK, just a minute. I’m trying to find out who owns her. The emblem’s—”

“Now, dammit!”

“No marking on her except her serial number and a picture of a rooster—and something else that’s been painted over.”

“RELKE!”

“Sure, Joe, OK.”

“Girls!” marveled Lije Henderson. “Whenna lass time you touch a real girl, Brax?”

“Don’ ass me, Lije! I sweah, if I evum touch a lady’s li’l pink fingah right now, I could—”

“Hell, I could jus’ sittin’ heah lookin’ at that ship. Girls. God! Lemme have those glasses, Relke.”

Novotny braked the runabout to a halt. “All right, get your helmets on,” he snapped. “Pressure your suits. I’m going to pump air out.”

“Whatthehell! Why, Joe?”

“So you can get out of this heap. You’re walking back. I’ll go on and find the break myself.”