Rocket to Limbo

“You’ll see, I think.” Peter glanced through the window. “Oh, they’re still here,” he said, nodding to the ships. “They’re not going anywhere.”

“But where are the crews?” A horrible thought struck Lars. “These people haven’t assimilated them somehow, have they? I mean, dug around in their minds until they were picked clean, and then—”

“No, no, nothing like that,” said Peter. “The crew of the Planetfall is in the same place as the crew of the Ganymede, with the sole exceptions of you and me.” There was a note of resignation and hopelessness in Peter’s voice.

“Where is that?”

“In a special vault they’ve built for them in the depths of the city.”

“You mean they’ve killed them?”

“Oh, no, they’re not dead. They’re asleep. They’ve been fed and cared for ever so carefully, but they’re kept sleeping, and as far as I can determine, these City-people have no intention in the world of waking them up, ever. That’s why I warned you to go easy until we saw how they received you, because I’ve got a hunch that if they decide to put us to sleep, nobody is ever going to wake us up.”

“Wait a minute,” Lars said, confused. “I left Fox and Lambert and the others up on the hillside. They couldn’t even get close to this place.”

“They’re here now. I doubt if they ever got a look at the inside of the city. I think they were put to sleep before the City-people brought them in. But I don’t know any way to tell that for sure.”

Lars stared at Peter, then walked over to the window again. “You still haven’t told me how you got here, or how the ship got here, for that matter.”

Peter shrugged. “They brought us here. Don’t ask me how, because I can’t tell you.”

“But you bolted that night with Salter and Leeds!” Lars accused.

“Not because I wanted to, believe me. I never dreamed that Salter would try to make a break for it so soon.”

“Then it was planned in advance.”

“Of course it was planned in advance,” Peter said irritably.

“You people went around that ship after the showdown with Fox acting as though you thought if you didn’t look at it, maybe it would just go away. Salter and his pals were planning a break with the ship from the minute the mutiny fell through. They didn’t cut me in on it until we were actually organizing the landing party, and then they only told me to be on my toes when the time came. They had no intention of running into any aliens on Wolf IV. They thought that the landing parties would leave the ship under a light guard, and that they could break away and seize it, and then head out. Which was what they did, up to a point.”

“And when they got back to Earth?”

“No problem. Who’d be there to argue any story they told? The Colonial Service would have to believe them.”

“So they planned to murder or maroon anyone that didn’t go along with them,” said Lars bitterly.

“Now you’re getting the picture,” said Peter. “I got just an inkling of it. Salter was still sore that I didn’t vote with him before, and I hoped I could spot the trouble and tip off the rest of you when the time came. Trouble was, it came too soon. Salter moved as soon as the rest of you were asleep, and I had the choice of going along quietly or taking a bullet in the head. I chose the former. I thought even at that I—might be able to break away and warn the men on the ship.”

“So that was how it was,” Lars said slowly. Suddenly, he felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He had not realized how much Peter’s desertion had hurt, not because of treachery to the ship and its crew, but very personally. He couldn’t believe that Peter had done what he had done willfully. “I’m glad it was that way,” he said. “I’m really glad.”

“You thought something else, maybe?”

“I—didn’t know what to think.”

“I suppose it must have looked pretty mean. Oh, I know

I’ve acted like a fool about some things on this trip, but I wasn’t ready to join this scheme, believe me. I felt pretty dirty helping Salter and Leeds get those boats across the river, and then cutting them loose. And of course, when we got back to where the Ganymede had landed, it was gone, and I didn’t have a chance to sound an alarm after all.”

“Gone!” said Lars. “You mean you didn’t move it at all?”

“It wasn’t there to be moved. You should have seen Jeff Salter’s face! It would have made you feel lots better about that trip over the mountain. He’d figured it was all smooth as oiled silk from then on out, and then whammo, no ship. We were in as bad shape as the ones we’d run out on. Only Salter wasn’t exactly the leader type. It scared him silly when we came down and found that ship gone. He was all over the place, sending us out to scour the area, he thought we might have missed the way, but scared to wait by himself for fear something would jump on him from the woods.”

“But what did happen?” asked Lars.