Planet Of No Return

It was Vjer who decided that. He had quietly dozed off after finishing the bloody gobbet of meat. Squatting on his heels, he was instantly and deeply asleep, his actions more like those of an animal than a human being. He woke up just as suddenly, squinting up at the sky and muttering something incomprehensible. He must have reached a decision of some kind because he used his crude knife to hack a length of tough vine from one of the trees. With this he lashed the two haunches of meat together, then grunted as he hoisted them to his shoulder. With the knife in one hand, the spear in the other, he started down the path — then stopped as though he had remembered something.

“Brrn,” he said, chuckling to himself. “Brrn, Brrn!” Then he turned back and continued on his way.

“Wait,” Brion called out. “I want to come with you.”

He started to follow the man — and stopped at the sudden wave of fear that washed over him. Vjer was shivering, his spear shaking in his hand so great was his panic. He backed slowly away, then halted again when Brion made as if to follow, radiating unhappiness, great tears forming in his eyes.

“Well I guess you don’t want me to go with you,” Brion said, in what he hoped was a soothing tone. “But we’ll meet again. You’ll be up in these hills somewhere and shouldn’t be hard to find.”

Vjer’s panic faded when Brion made no move to follow him a second time. He backed away among the trees, then turned and hurried off as fast as he could under the burden of the meat. When he was well out of sight Brion turned and went in the opposite direction, back to the plain. He made a quick detour to refill his waterbottle then began trotting back along the track he had taken the previous day. He had a fixed objective in mind now. The visit to the battlefield could wait — the longer that he put off personal contact with the deadly enemy the better. There would be time enough to do that after he had managed to communicate with Vjer. It might be possible, though it was surely a long shot, that Vjer could tell him enough about the war so he would not have to make the dangerous journey.

The crater was clearly visible in the open plain and he made his way towards it, stopping when he was about a hundred yards distant. He then trampled in a circle to flatten the grass, so that his signal panels could be seen. It was only a few minutes before the area was flat enough to enable him to spread out the pieces of thin cloth. He used chunks of dirt that had been blasted from the crater to hold them in place. After laying out the ‘X’ he paused and counted slowly to one hundred. This should give the lifeship’s computer, in orbit high above, enough time to identify and zero in on his signal.

When he was sure he was being observed, Brion spelled out a ‘V and another ‘X’, followed by two Ts’. Then he sat back, sipped at his waterbottle, and waited.

The signal was clear enough. Land. At this place. Soonest. Right now the lifeship should be computing its orbit. Considering its present altitude, the ship should be on the ground within an hour, two at the most. Brion waited a few minutes, then gathered up all of the signal panels, except for the ‘X’, and stowed them away. When this task was finished he walked off for a quarter of a mile and sat down to wait. Computers were very literal and the ship would land precisely where it had been instructed to. He had no intention of being on that spot.

But the longer he sat there, thinking about the situation, the more concerned he became. This mission was suddenly becoming very dangerous again. The lifeship would have to set down some time, there was no way to avoid that. And this spot was about the safest that could be found, the farthest away from any of the battle sites. Doubly safe because if there were metal detectors at work they might be confused by the wing of the destroyed aircraft. If the computers kept track of such things they would have logged this location as harmless. But all of this was just speculation. They would have to rely on a little luck as well.

He needed just a single piece of equipment. If he worked fast he could board, find what he needed, then get out — and have Lea and the ship spaceborne again within two minutes. He hoped that it would be enough time. Once the lifeship was safely away he would leave the equipment under the shattered metal wing and beat a quick retreat himself. If the equipment were still undisturbed by morning he would retrieve it, then go looking for Vjer.