Jandrax - Syd Logsdon, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 1
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Jandrax
Syd
Logsdon
A sphere floating in space, silver against a backdrop of stars.
The stars shift their colors,doppler down, out. The sphere hangs alone in darkness where
here
and
there
are concepts yet unborn. Six antennae project; it is not so much moved as displaced. First it is here, then
it is there, but it never crosses the space between here and there.
Within the sphere, eight souls are busy taming the nether energies, the Synapse, so that they might
emerge fromotherwhere in the place of their choosing. One prowls restlessly in a place foreign to his
nature, and one moves quietly in the darkness with certainty in his mind and death in his right hand.
The dark figure paused outside the room where the computer split seconds into their million component
particles and prepared to extract them from nether-where. He watched the stars fade out on the screen
past Dennison's sandy head. Only a moment would pass until the stars returned andNew Harmony lay
below. Synapse drive can cross the galaxy in a heartbeat.
He released the trigger and hurled the grenade.
The explosion echoed through the sphere; JanAndrax ran toward it. The bomber was gone when he
reached the computer bay. Flames roared in the confined space asStaal staggered out, his clothing afire.
Jan beat out the flames and leaped in to rescue his partner.
In the control room, Captain George Childe heard the explosion and shouted into the com. There was
no answer. He tried again, then aborted without further hesitation and the stars returned.
Strange stars.
Synapse drive can cross the galaxyIn a heartbeat. Four seconds had passed.
PART 1
From the log of JanAndrax ,
Standard Year 873 and of the colony, Year
These are the bare facts about the planet fate has chosen for our last landfall: diameter somewhat smaller
than Earth, day 21 hours, year 312 Earth-standard days (a little over 356 planet days), axial tilt 32°,
considerably more than Earth, resulting in greater seasonal variation. Orbitalellipticity considerably greater
as well, reinforcing that effect.
Damn!
Chapter 1
The planet hung like a cold jewel in theviewport —the last planet most of them would ever see from
orbit. Great icecaps stretched north and south, coursing together to touch hands at the equator along the
one major north-south-tending mountain range. Of course the world was uncharted. The stars hanging
beyond it were arrayed in a manner utterly strange.
The planet's oceans were gone—locked into the massive polar caps—and what remained as seas would
be extremely saline. The air would be very dry; it was likely that rain never fell, only winter snows.
A cold, barren, forbidding world hanging close in to a cool sun.
JasonD'Angelo was on watch, his 10-mm double-barreled rifle cradled across his arm, when the leer
broke cover. He heard its splayed webbed feet splat-ting on the muddy ground before he saw it. Lucien
Dubois saw it at the same time and leaped back from the carcass he was gutting, bringing his knife up in
futile defense.
Jason fired as the leer began its final rush toward the unprotected colonist. The leer staggered and turned
on his new tormentor. Blood discolored the bird's iridescent pink feathers, but did nothing to slow its
charge. Jason aimed more carefully this time and shot it fair in the chest, just left of its massive sternum.
The leer went down like a felled tree and Jason broke open his rifle.
The dead leer's mate broke cover before he had time to reload. Jason spun around in time to see the
bird explode soundlessly, scattering flesh and entrails across the clearing. For a moment Jason was too
stunned to react,then he realized that JanAndrax stood beside him holding his express pistol. "You'd
better finish reloading,Jase ," he said and turned away. Jason punched two new shells into the breech of
his rifle and was grateful that there was no one to see how his fingers trembled.
Andraxswallowed hard. It had been a close thing forD'Angelo and through no fault of his own. The
10-mm rifle was part of a small consignment forNew Harmony ; it was designed for simplicity and
reliability, not firepower. A two-shot weapon simply was not adequate for an untamed world.
He bolstered his express pistol. Dubois had returned to gutting the herby, but the violence of his motions
showed the degree to which he had been frightened. That was good; the fright was inevitable but he
continued to function in spite of it. Jan made no move to aid him, but continued to scan the surrounding
bushes.
Jason wiped blood from his face. It had been that close. Express pistols were a specialty tool issued
only to Scouts. By twisting a dial with his off hand, Jan could tailor projectile size and velocity to the
target at hand. If the dial was not touched the maximum charge was sufficient to stop a terrestrial elephant
three tunes over. Jan had not dialed.
Jason searched for an appropriate response to the situation, but could only say, lamely, "Thanks."
Jan smiled, but his eyes never left the perimeter of the clearing. "When I was scouting onLando , I nearly
got myself killed a couple of times, and—you know what? You never get used to it.
"However, you do learn not to let it throw you off. Put it out of your mind and get back to watching so
that I can help get this carcass back to base."
Stung, Jason turned his attention back to duty.
They slung the field-dressed herby on a pole and returned to camp, passing through the tangle field that
so far had kept the nativecarnivora at a reasonable distance.
The landing craft was in orbit, having carried up a load of meat to feed the colonists on the
Lydia
. In the
early years of star travel each ship had been a self-contained ecosystem, but with the advent of the
Synapse and nearly instantaneous interstellar travel, ships turned to processed food and mechanical
recirculation of air and water. Three weeks in orbit had completely exhausted the
Lydias
food stores.
JanAndrax dropped onto a camp stool made from the stems of a tough, fast-growing bush and began
scraping from his boots the mucilaginous substance exuded by the local ground cover. Jason relinquished
his rifle and another pair of colonists left to hunt. Hunting was a full-time occupation for those who had to
supply meat to the many overhead.
Jan stopped scraping long enough to assure himself that they were not going to be overheard,then asked,
"Any word on the computer?" Jason shook his head. Jan swept the area abouthim with a searching look
before returning to his boots. Jason realized that he probably was not even aware of that mannerism. Jan
was a Scout, trained for just such an environment; Jason was the ship'sastrogator . He had never felt
more out of place or useless.
"They'll never fix the computer,"Andrax continued. "You know that, don't you?" Jason nodded. Both of
them had seen the computer bay after the explosion. The Synapse jump had lasted over four seconds;
the longest previous jump, under carefully controlled conditions, had been of less than a second's
duration and it had driven a ship clear outside the galactic lens. Instantaneous travel had its complications.
"Jase, how long before Captain Childe comes to his senses and announces to the colonists that this is to
be their new home—and ours?"
"It's awfully hard for him to accept."
"Humph. It's hard for
me
to accept. This is one hell of a final landfall, but facts are facts."
Jason held his peace, not wanting to criticize the captain. Already lines had been drawn, separating the
seven living crew members from the colonists.Andrax was supernumerary, a Scout hitching a free ride
fromBanex to Aleph Prime viaNew Harmony . He did not fit either classification but Jason was thankful
to have him aboard. How they could hope to survive without his professional expertise was a question he
preferred not to face.
"Well," Jan continued, "if the announcement hasn't been made yet, I intend to explore those so-called
ruins tomorrow. Once Childe starts ferrying down colonists, there won't be any time. Want to come
along?"
Jason said that he did, but later, as sounds from the temporary jungle that surrounded them kept him
awake, he wondered why.
The landing craft descended with the sunrise, carrying half a dozen new colonists. Jan met them at the
ramp, giving concise orders and turning them over to their more experienced comrades. There was
something vaguely familiar about the fourth colonist, but a closer look did nothing to spark Jan's memory.
The man was named AdrianDumezil , of indeterminate middle age and pleasant, but undistinguished
features. Jan motioned him out of line, for no other reason than that he had caught his eye, and he had
already intended to take one of the new colonists with him.
Jason andDumezil carried packs; Jan did not. It was Jan's order, strictly enforced, that those whose job
it was to guard should not be burdened otherwise. More than one colonist had felt Jan's anger after
relaxing his guard momentarily to help a companion.
It takes only a moment of inattention to bring death on a new planet.
Jan set the pace, stepping out sharply. The land rolled gently and their vision was restricted by the
fast-growing bushes, but not so restricted as it would have been even a week earlier. The herds ofherbys
,trihorns , andhumpox had battered and browsed the bushes into a thick, tangled, dying mat.
Jason quizzedAdrian , seeking out the climate of opinion overhead.
"No one knows what to believe,"Dumezil replied. "The official word is that there was a computer
malfunction, but rumor says that it was a major explosion and that we are stranded. Frankly, rumor is
more convincing." He looked sideways at Jan to ask, "Which is it?"
"Explosion," Jan answered. Jason winced. "We are here for as long as we survive. Childe is a fool.
When he gets around to telling the truth, he will have alienated all the colonists just when he needs them
most… hit the deck!"
The Scout's sudden change of tone caught his companions flat-footed. Jan had already gone to cover
beneath asiskal bush with his express pistol at the ready. Jason andDumezil tumbled in to join him.
There was a rustling in the brush and a coughing grunt,then a group oftrihorns came into sight. They were
magnificent beasts, fully two meters high at the shoulders with shaggy manes sloping away to low, naked
rumps. Their heads were massive and sported a single central horn projecting forward and trifurcating,
one point up and two down.
They were mammals, of course. Hair, live birth, warm blood, and suckling are all characteristics evolved
in just such a harsh, cold climate. It was clearly a family group: a monstrous bull, anuddered female with
two hornless suckling calves at her side, and amonopointed adolescent.
The three men remained motionless until they had passed.
AdrianDumezil wiped sweat from his face and grinned. "Now there goes a beast I wouldn't like to
tackle. I thought this was a desert planet."
"It is," Jan replied. Because of the cold, and be cause most of the planet's water was tied up in the
massive icecaps, it never rained. Much of the year the land was barren desert, but in the winter ice
crystals formed in the upper atmosphere and fell as sleet, snow, and hail. Throughout the winter this
accumulated and, with the coming of spring, melted to release water for the growth of plants. Within a
few weeks of its coming, the melt would pass, leaving desert again.
This was the stationary view. From space the area of the melt was a broad band of green moving slowly
southward. Along the route of the green belt moved massive herds of herbivores and attendant
carnivores, caught up in a perpetual migration.
The landing craft had set down on the forefront of the green belt three weeks earlier and already the
herds had largely passed by. Within days it would be necessary to move the hunting base southward
several hundred kilometers.
They marched in silence then, broken only when Jan or Jason showed Adrian how to recognizesiskal ,lal
, and greenhorn bushes and the tracks of the three major herbivores and their corresponding carnivores:
the leers—huge, toothed, flightless birds—and long-necks, whose sinuous necks and compact
musculature made them particularly dangerous, and the tiny, scavengerkrats .
They were ruins. Despite the stats he had studied, Jan had not believed that they would be.
The ruins topped a butte that rose perhaps a hundred meters above the surrounding countryside and
extended for about a square kilometer. It took a sharp scramble to reach them and, when they had, there
was little to reward the climb. Few of the stone walls remained more than waist-high and most of the
city/castle/fortification/whatever was reduced to rubble by time. There was little to show what manner of
creature had inhabited the place until Jason found a mural on one of the plastered inner walls. Its faded
pigment showed a potbellied, winged mammal with what appeared to be grasping hands. In a corner of
the mural, isolated by fractured plaster, were the foot and ankle of another creature. Jan stared long at it,
then rummaged without success for the lost pieces of plaster.Adrian joined him, asking "Why so intent?"
"Because," Jan answered, "that foot looks uncannily human." They did not find the missing plaster,nor
anything else to identify the masters of the ruin.
It was well pastnoon when they left the site, intent on returning to the camp by nightfall. Jason seemed
troubled and managed to fall back slightly to speak to Jan alone.
"Something you said toDumezil bothers me. You said that we would be here as long as we survive.
What exactly did you mean by that?"
Jan did not answer at once. His restless eyes never stopped their circuit. "Jase, do you know what the
mortality rate is for Scouts on a new planet? Trained men whose whole life is dedicated to survival?"
"No."
"Ten percent for each new planet."Jason greeted that with stunned silence.
"Jase, the first planet I explored, three of my twenty companionsdied ; nor was it an exceptionally
dangerous planet. On my second planet two of my friends were cut down before my eyes by an
innocuous-looking flying mammal whose poison was deadly to humans.
"I came through my third planet with no particular difficulty, but on the last one I tangled with a large,
horned herbivore during my first day planet-side and left in a coma. I spent a total of two hours on her
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