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space, and propelled by a small set of closrem drivers that, in a planetary
gravitational field, were somewhat overburdened by the pod's mass. It was a
handy little vehicle for outer hull inspection and repair in free fall, and
for dumping detected stowaways back to their POEs. Once its orbital velocity
was nullified, there was no way it could go but down. Its drivers could power
it for a safe landing, but not to go sailing away to some other planet. By
using an autopod to return a stowaway, a spaceship saved the time, expense,
and red tape of an extra landing and liftoff.
Cargy was safety-strapped into the pod's one seat and the transparent
hatch-dome lowered over him. A
tinny-voiced communicator in the pod said pod release would be in forty-five
seconds. In another voice it answered itself:
"Inner lock sealed, now pumping . . . Pumping complete. Outer lock opening."
Cargy gaped and gasped as the open lock revealed a rectangle of stars and the
bright horizon-bands of
Merga. It was more of a sight than his Mead-memories had led him to expect.
Then suddenly the pod's closrems came to life, and he was through the lock and
dropping away from the big ship. Voices on the communicator told him the ship
was once more on its way to Princon.
With the spaceship no longer to be reckoned with, Cargy went into action.
There were no manual controls within his reach, these components having been
removed when the pod was being readied for this descent. There was not even an
emergency override of the pod's flight computer.
There was, however, the mounting panel from which the manuals had been
removed, and it was perforated by a dozen plug holes. Ordinarily, these holes
would offer no possibilities to a pod passenger.
But Cargy spent most of his time in the Mergan wilderness, and he was never
without his defense batteries, worn like curving plates along his belt.
Being in plain sight as they were, and also being so standard an item of
apparel on Merga, the batteries hadn't attracted a glance, much less a
thought, from the spaceship's officers and crew.
Now Cargy unsnapped his safety harness and got busy. Setting his batteries on
parallel for low voltage, he rammed his electroprobes into a couple of plug
holes and listened with satisfaction as the closrems'
roar took on a lower pitch. He was feeding a counter-current into the driver
power supply. This would cause the pod to lose orbital velocity more slowly
and carry him past Port City. He could have plugged in the other way and
dropped out of orbit more swiftly, but that would have plunked him in the
ocean instead of on land.
A good two minutes passed before the communicator yapped:
"Scramble rescue squad! Autopod is overshooting! Scramble rescue squad! . . .
Damnit, rescue squad! Respond!"
Cargy recognized the voice as that of a Port City Control Tower supervisor.
"Uh, this is Horax. The others are at supper."
"What the hell do you mean, at supper? They eat in the squad room!"
"Well, you see, tower, there ain't never much to do, and there's this cafe
just across the road, so "
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"Good God! Heads are going to roll over this! I mean that! Get to that cafe
and rout them out on the double!"
"Uh, okay."
"Kid in the autopod . . . Tommy Larkan! Speak up, boy."
As he recognized the tower man's voice, and figured the man might recognize
his own as well, Cargy kept quiet. The rescue squad's goofing off was going to
give him at least five minutes he hadn't counted on. Which opened a new
possibility. Instead of letting the pod land a few miles outside of Port City
and
running like hell, why not go a hundred miles or so inland, land there, and
try to knock out the tracer-bleep circuit before the rescue clopter could
reach the scene? That way, he could keep the pod for his own use and useful it
would be indeed once he had stripped it of its overweight hull and rigged some
manual controls!
He grinned at the frantic anger of the tower man's exclamations as the pod
zipped over Port City at an altitude of nearly fifteen miles. "
No, he won't overshoot the entire continent,"
he heard him tell somebody.
"He's losing altitude too fast for that."
Soon thereafter Cargy realized he was losing altitude too fast, period. At
this rate he would smash the pod and himself flat when he landed. Hastily, he
yanked his electroprobes out of the plug holes, switched them about, and
reinserted them. The pitch of the closrems rose and Cargy felt the increased
tug of their upward and slightly rearward acceleration.
But he was already beyond Dappliner Valley and still going fast. He would come
down slowly enough for a safe landing, but a good two thousand miles inland!
He thought of psychivores, and his stomach tried to turn upside down. This
wasn't what he'd had in mind at all!
3
The small degree of control his electroprobes gave him permitted him to put
the pod down in a small clearing, instead of in the treetops. But his control
wasn't enough to stop him short of or carry him past the area which his mental
map marked as psychivore country.
In trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and these spooky
monstrosities, he had landed himself precisely in their midst.
He wanted to cringe down out of sight in the pod the instant it bounced to a
halt, but he knew he couldn't do that. The tracer-bleep was doubtless on the
job, guiding the rescue clopter toward him. He couldn't have those guys
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