Roger D. Aycock - Traders Risk.pdf - Roger D. Aycock - widez2

Traders Risk

Aycock, Roger D.

Published: 1958

Type(s): Short Fiction, Science Fiction

Source: http://gutenberg.org

About Aycock:

Roger D. Aycock (1914-2004) was an American author who wrote un-

der the pseudonym Roger Dee. He primarily wrote science fiction.

Source: Wikipedia

Also available on Feedbooks for Aycock:

• Control Group (1960)

check the copyright status in your country.

Note: This book is brought to you by Feedbooks.

http://www.feedbooks.com

Strictly for personal use, do not use this file for commercial purposes.

The Ciriimian ship was passing in hyperdrive through a classic three-

body system, comprising in this case a fiercely white sun circled by a

fainter companion and a single planet that swung in precise balance,

when the Canthorian Zid broke out of its cage in the specimen hold.

Of the ship's social quartet, Chafis One and Two were asleep at the

moment, dreaming wistful dreams of conical Ciriimian cities spearing up

to a soft and plum-colored sky. The Zid raged into their communal rest

cell, smashed them down from their gimbaled sleeping perches and,

with the ravening blood-hunger of its kind, devoured them before they

could wake enough to teleport to safety.

Chafis Three and Four, on psi shift in the forward control cubicle,

might have fallen as easily if the mental screamings of their fellows had

not warned them in time. As it was, they had barely time to teleport

themselves to the after hold, as far as possible from immediate danger,

and to consider the issue while the Zid lunged about the ship in search of

them with malignant cries and a great shrieking of claws on metal.

Their case was the more desperate because the Chafis were profession-

al freighters with little experience of emergency. Hauling a Zid from

Canthorian jungles to a Ciriimian zoo was a prosaic enough assignment

so long as the cage held, but with the raging brute swiftly smelling them

out, they were helpless to catch and restrain it.

When the Zid found them, they had no other course but to teleport

back to the control cubicle and wait until the beast should snuff them

down again. The Zid learned quickly, so quickly that it was soon clear

that its physical strength would far outlast their considerable but limited

telekinetic ability.

Still they possessed their share of owlish Ciriimian logic and hit soon

enough upon the one practical course—to jettison the Zid on the nearest

world demonstrably free of intelligent life.

They worked hurriedly, between jumps fore and aft. Chafi Three,

while they were still in the control cubicle, threw the ship out of hyper-

drive within scant miles of the neighboring sun's single planet. Chafi

Four, on the next jump, scanned the ship's charts and identified the sys-

tem through which they traveled.

Luck was with them. The system had been catalogued some four

Ciriimian generations before and tagged: Planet undeveloped. Tranquil

marine intelligences only.

The discovery relieved them greatly for the reason that no Ciriimian,

even to save his own feathered skin, would have set down such a mon-

ster as the Zid among rational but vulnerable entities.

The planet was a water world, bare of continents and only sparsely

sprinkled with minor archipelagoes. The islands suited the Chafis' pur-

pose admirably.

"The Zid does not swim," Chafi Four radiated. "Marooned, it can do no

harm to marine intelligences."

"Also," Chafi Three pointed out as they dodged to the control cubicle

again just ahead of the slavering Zid, "we may return later with a

Canthorian hunting party and recover our investment."

Closing their perception against the Zid's distracting ragings, they set

to work with perfect coordination.

Chafi Three set down the ship on an island that was only one of a

freckling chain of similar islands. Chafi Four projected himself first to the

opened port; then, when the Zid charged after him, to the herbivore-

cropped sward of tropical setting outside.

The Zid lunged out. Chafi Four teleported inside again. Chafi Three

closed the port. Together they relaxed their perception shields in relief—

Unaware in their consternation that they committed the barbarous

lapse of vocalizing, they twittered aloud when they realized the extent of

their error.

Above the far, murmurous whisper of expected marine cerebration

there rose an uncoordinated mishmash of thought from at least two

strong and relatively complex intelligences.

"Gas-breathing!" Chafi Four said unbelievingly. "Warm-blooded, land-

dwelling, mammalian!"

"A Class Five culture," Chafi agreed shakenly. His aura quivered with

the shock of betrayal. "The catalogue was wrong ."

Ironically, their problem was more pressing now than before. Unless

checked, the Zid would rapidly depopulate the island—and, to check it,

they must break a prime rule of Galactic protocol in asking the help of a

new and untested species.

But they had no choice. They teleported at once into the presence of

the two nearby natives—and met with frustration beyond Ciriimian

experience.

Jeff Aubray glimpsed the Ciriimian ship's landing because the morn-

ing was a Oneday, and on Onedays his mission to the island demanded

that he be up and about at sunrise.

For two reasons: On Onedays, through some unfailing miracle of

Calaxian seamanship, old Charlie Mack sailed down in his ancient Island

Queen from the township that represented colonial Terran civilization in

Procynian Archipelago 147, bringing supplies and gossip to last Jeff

through the following Tenday. The Queen would dock at Jeff's little pier

at dawn; she was never late.

Also on Onedays, necessarily before Charlie Mack's visit, Jeff must as-

semble his smuggled communicator—kept dismantled and hidden from

suspicious local eyes—and report to Earth Interests Consulate his pro-

gress during the cycle just ended. The ungodly hour of transmission, nat-

urally, was set to coincide with the closing of the Consul's field office

halfway around the planet.

So the nacreous glory of Procyon's rising was just tinting the windows

of Jeff's cottage when he aligned and activated his little communicator on

his breakfast table. Its three-inch screen lighted to signal and a dour and

disappointed Consul Satterfield looked at him. Behind Satterfield, fore-

shortened to gnomishness by the pickup, lurked Dr. Hermann, Earth In-

terests' resident zoologist.

"No progress," Jeff reported, "except that the few islanders I've met

seem to be accepting me at last. A little more time and they might let me

into the Township, where I can learn something. If Homeside—"

"You've had seven Tendays," Satterfield said. "Homeside won't wait

longer, Aubray. They need those calm-crystals too badly."

"They'll use force?" Jeff had considered the possibility, but its immedi-

acy appalled him. "Sir, these colonists had been autonomous for over

two hundred years, ever since the Fourth War cut them off from us. Will

Homeside deny their independence?"

His sense of loss at Satterfield's grim nod stemmed from something

deeper than sympathy for the islanders. It found roots in his daily

rambles over the little island granted him by the Township for the paint-

ing he had begun as a blind to his assignment, and in the gossip of old

Charlie Mack and the few others he had met. He had learned to appreci-

ate the easy life of the islands well enough to be dismayed now by what

must happen under EI pressure to old Charlie and his handful of sun-

browned fisherfolk.

Roger D. Aycock - Traders Risk.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: