Raiders From the Rings Read online

  Yet Ben Trefon now felt a surge of pleasure and contentment as he walked up the ramp and into the great receiving hall of his father’s house. He sniffed at the familiar tinge of ozone in the artificial atmosphere and listened to the soft, solid thump of his feet on the red sandstone flagstones as he crossed through to the private wings of the house. He was a small, wiry youth with a spring in his step and the first hint of premature gray in his hair. With the rich oxygen ratio in the house his cheeks were pinker than usual, and he felt the usual exhilaration in spite of the worry that was nagging at his mind.

  He crossed the concourse leading to the community center and common rooms. Once inside his family’s private quarters, he checked the call board and saw that only half a dozen families were checked in. He realized then what it was he had missed as he came in through the entry hall. There had been no sign of the crowd of small boys who were usually running and shouting, chasing each other to be first to greet him on other occasions when he had returned to the House of Trefon.

  Ben scratched his head, flipped on the daylight screens, and dropped his space pack on a canvas armchair as late afternoon light filled the room. This was a combination study and living room, with books and tapes piled in disorderly array against the plastic walls; farther back were the sun deck and the sleeping quarters, the only part of the private quarters that Dad ever managed to keep as neat and sparkling as when Mom was alive. Ben drifted from room to room, eager to see his father, wondering, as he had wondered so often before, if things would have been different for them all if his mother had lived long enough for him to know her. Not that he didn’t get along with Dad; they were friends, and they respected each other. But always there were Spacer affairs to be taken care of, reports to prepare for the Council, plans to be made, and never somehow quite enough time for father and son to get to know each other well.

  Ben Trefon felt his father’s presence in the room before he heard him. Ivan Trefon might have been a carbon copy of his son, except for the added years that showed in the lines of his face and the whiteness of his hair. He took off his glasses and stared at his son for a long moment, then touched his forehead in a mock salute. “So the astronaut returns,” he said wryly. “Welcome home. For a minute there I thought old Dusty Red had you for sure.”

  Ben flushed at the old Spacer nickname for Mars, and at the gentle warning his father was implying. He knew as well as any Spacer the terrible toll of lives old Dusty Red had taken before ships had been equipped with null-gravity units. “I misjudged it,” Ben said. “I should never have tried landing without null-grav.”

  Ivan Trefon chuckled. “You don’t look very penitent, somehow. Just be glad a license inspector wasn’t watching you land. You’d have gone back to the practice ships for the next five years.” The older man regarded his son quizzically. “Though I have to give you credit. Once you’d trapped yourself, you pulled it off pretty well. I’d have gone into the Rift for sure.”

  “They teach us to fly ships these days, not just pull levers,” Ben replied. “And that was one of the new S-80’s, too. Have you ever flown one? They make the old four-seaters look like cargo ships, handle so smoothly you hardly know you’re out there.” He hesitated, trying to read his father’s face. “I should have been checking in at the rendezvous with that ship right now, dad. As it is, I’ll miss the final briefing. Why did you want me here?”

  Ivan Trefon looked suddenly older, and very tired. “Maybe just an old man’s whim. Wanted a look at my boy before he left on his first raid.”

  “And the Council meeting?” Ben said. “Is that an old man’s whim? You aren’t that old, dad. What’s gone wrong? Something surely has. And it’s got something to do with the raid. What is it?”

  The older man turned away and shrugged his shoulders. “It’s very simple,” he said quietly. “I want to stop this raid. I’ve been trying ever since it was planned. I’ve spent the last three days trying to get the Council to put the brakes on it, and so far I haven’t won. It’s beginning to look as if I’m not going to, either.” He looked across at Ben. “So there you have it.”

  Ben’s eyes reflected his astonishment. “Stop the raid? But I don’t understand. Why?”

  “Because it has to be stopped.”

  “That’s no answer, and you know it.”

  Ivan Trefon smiled ruefully. “So the Council has been telling me. If I had a better answer, maybe they’d listen.” He stopped smiling and looked at Ben. “This is your first raid, isn’t it?”

  “The first real one. I’ve been down twice with a scouting party, and once on a mock raid, but never the real thing before.”

  “What do you know about this raid? What’s your objective? What are you striking for?”

  “Food,” Ben Trefon said. “Wheat, beef, staples … supplies are getting low, and we can’t live on Martian barley.”

  “Where’s the strike point?”

  “North American mid-continent. There’s a central food warehouse there with over a thousand wheat storage bins. Our contact men already have them rigged with null-grav units. All we need is an orbit ship to scoop them in, and a crew to go down and activate the units.”

  “And fight off the guard units stationed in the warehouse,” Ivan Trefon said.

  “Even that’s been taken care of,” Ben said eagerly. “The word has been leaked out that our strike point will be a South American food dump. And they’ve garrisoned that one to the teeth and pulled most of the guard strength away from the real objective.”

  “And what about women?” the older man said.

  “Well, there’s that on any raid, naturally,” Ben said. “But the last raid filled the quota pretty well, so only the firsttimers are expected to bring back girls this time.” He shrugged disgustedly. “Matter of fact, that’s all my personal orders will let me do on this raid … find a good mauki prospect and haul her back here. But you already know all this. The Council has the whole plan from the Raid Commander. Why are you asking me?”

  “To see if you know what you’re walking into,” Ivan Trefon said.

  “Well, there’s nothing very exciting about kidnaping a girl,” Ben admitted. “But on the next raid they’ll let me do more.”

  His father nodded slowly. “If there is a next raid.”

  Suddenly Ben could feel the tension in the air, the strain and tiredness in his father’s voice. “Dad, what are you talking about? What’s wrong? Why did you call me down here?”

  “Because I don’t want you to go on this raid.”

  “You mean you want me to scratch?”

  “That’s right. I want you to scratch.”

  Ben was silent for a moment, staring at his father. Then he sighed. “Dad, look. I know that the raids are dangerous. But I’ve been training for weeks. I can take care of myself.”

  The older man shook his head impatiently. “It’s not that. If I let myself worry about you taking care of yourself, I’d have cracked up years ago.”

  “Then what is it? What’s wrong?”

  Ivan Trefon walked across the room to the light screen, and stared out at the darkening Martian desert. The sun was almost at the horizon now, bathing the rolling sand hills in deep purple light. Already the sky above was black, and the stars were showing by the hundreds. The old man turned and looked at his son squarely. “I don’t know what’s wrong, not for sure,” he said. “If I did, I swear that I’d tell you. All I know for sure is that something is wrong. Something is going on, down on Earth, that our best intelligence men there can’t crack. The Earthmen have it under security wraps so tight that we can’t even get a toe in the door. All we can get is rumors, but the rumors sound bad.”

  “Rumors about what?”

  “About a blow-out,” Ivan Trefon said. “Not just another of their silly reprisals. Not just a vigilante ship coming out to kidnap and torture a mauki or two. I mean a real blow-out.”

  “But what else could they do?” Ben asked incredulously. “They can’t mount a fleet against
us … anybody knows that.”

  “I’m not so sure,” his father said slowly. “How much do you know about what’s been going on?”

  “You mean between Earthmen and Spacers?”

  “That’s right.”

  Ben scratched his jaw. “Well … I know what everybody else knows.”

  “Like what, for instance?”

  “That Earth is theirs and space is ours. That they slammed the door on us centuries ago, and that we’ve never been able to break it open again. And that sometime we’ll grow strong enough to force the door open so that we won’t have to raid them any more for food and women and other things we need. Then we can come and go as we please on Earth and they can come and go as they please in space.”

  Ivan Trefon shook his head grimly. “It’s a pretty dream, I know,” he said. “Even I used to believe it, a long time ago.”

  “You mean you think that we’ll never have peace?” Ben said.

  “I’m afraid that’s what I mean.”

  “But why not?”

  “Because they hate us,” Ivan Trefon said. “They hate us and they fear us. They fear the slightest contact with us, as if we had some kind of horrible disease. I never really realized how much they hated us until we had the meeting last year with their emissaries.”

  Ben stared. “You — you had a meeting with them?”

  The older man nodded. “The Council never released the news. It was a pretty ugly meeting, and we learned later that they executed their own emissaries in space on their way home after their reports were taped. They were afraid even to let them set foot back on Earth. But we learned a lot from that meeting.”

  “Like what?”

  “A few simple facts that we’d known for a long time, but never really believed,” Ivan Trefon said wearily. “We learned that Earth will never settle for peace with us. They won’t even settle for enslaving us. They want us dead. Every man, every woman, every child of us — dead. Those were their terms for peace. And now our contact men down there are worried. Money has been going somewhere, and they can’t find out where. In the past five years more and more of Earth’s total labor force has been working on something that hasn’t appeared on the public market. The standard of living has dropped over fifty per cent, farms are lying idle, factories have closed down. Everything has been changing in the last five years, and now it’s beginning to look as if something is ready to break loose.”

  Ben Trefon was silent for a long moment. Then he shook his head. “And you think that whatever they’re doing is somehow tied into this raid?”

  “I think something is ready to break. I think this raid could be the trigger to set it off.”

  “But don’t you see that this is all the more reason why I can’t back out?” Ben said. “Dad, we can’t survive without the raids. Sooner or later somebody is going to have to go down there. And I’ve been tapped for this raiding party. I can’t stay home just because you’re afraid something terrible is going to happen.”

  His father looked up at him. ‘“You’re determined to go, then.”

  “Of course I’m determined to go. But I’m worried about you, now. You sound — ” Ben groped for words.

  “Like I’m losing my grip?” Ivan Trefon laughed. “Like a frightened old man, trying to scare you away with spooks?”

  “Well, maybe not,” Ben said soberly. “But you’re frightened, whether you know it or not. And there’s nothing to be frightened of. We’ve been raiding Earth for centuries. Nothing different is going to happen this time than any other time.” Ben shrugged. “So maybe they have some fancy plan for beating us off. What do we care? The only thing they could possibly do to hurt us would be to mount a fleet against us, a space fleet. And everybody knows they can’t do that. They don’t know how, and they’re afraid to try.”

  “I suppose,” Ivan Trefon said sadly. “Well, if you’re determined, nothing I can say is going to stop you. But you can’t say I didn’t try. Good luck, boy. And good hunting.”

  Ben clasped his father’s hand. “I’ll need both, if I’m going to bring back a mauki. You might buzz Elmo in the shop and tell him I won’t need that liniment, after all.” He turned and started for the door, his mind still filled with uneasiness. What was it that was bothering Dad? What was it he was trying to say, and still had left unsaid? At the door he turned back, searching his father’s tired face. “Was there anything else, before I go?”

  Ivan Trefon shook his head slowly. “No, not really. Not now. But Ben — ” He hesitated. “You know where the vaults are?”

  “You mean down below?”

  The old man nodded. “The lock was keyed to your handprint the day you were born. There are certain things which require attention there, after I’m gone. When the time comes, I must count on you to open the vault. You will be responsible for what you find there.”

  “When the time comes?”

  “If anything should happen to me.”

  “Of course. You can count on it.”

  His father took a deep breath. “Good,” he said. “Now you’d better move, before the night winds give you a rough takeoff.”

  Moments later Ben Trefon was walking back through the deserted entry hall toward the ramp to the hangar. Lights were coming on now, but there was still an eerie silence about the place, as though some portion of the life had somehow gone out of the House of Trefon. Ben frowned as he started down the ramp, still puzzling over his father’s last words. Down in the hangar his little S-80 was waiting, fully fuelled, the bent landing skid straightened and welded. His mind turned back to the excitement of the forthcoming raid. He checked out for launching, climbed into the cabin and waited as the winches drew the little ship out through the airlock and placed it on the long launching track.

  And then, with a roar of power and the whine of antigravity engines reverberating in his ears, Ben Trefon lifted the little ship swiftly into the dark sky and watched the House of Trefon dwindle to a speck on the Martian desert below him. Maybe when he came back, he thought, his father would explain what it was that he still had left unsaid. But somehow Ben knew, even now, that he was leaving behind in this house something he would never regain. He shifted the controls gently, and watched as the ship moved out from behind the disc of Mars and headed like a tiny arrow in toward the orbit of Earth.

  2

  THE RAID

  SOMEWHERE FAR below the dark side of the planet Earth glowed dimly up in the ashen light from the moon. Hardly breathing, Ben Trefon watched the great gray disc loom steadily larger in the view screen of his scout ship. For the hundredth time he checked the approach pattern of lights on the control panel before him; each tiny fleck of light represented one of his companion ships. He adjusted the controls, felt the little ship veer slightly as he brought it back into proper alignment with the others. There was no sign of the other ships in his view screen. The flat-black paint on their hulls reflected no light, and the ships were darkened, moving toward their target like shadows out of the blackness of space.

  From the perimeter of the dark planet below a tiny fleck of light appeared, turning in a slow curve, then blinking out again as it moved into Earth’s shadow. It was an early warning satellite, moving in a low, watchful orbit around Earth. Ben smiled grimly to himself. That would mean that Earth now knew the raiders were coming. Long since, the great radar screens on the planet’s surface must have picked out the pattern of the raiding ships: over three hundred reflecting fragments of metal, moving in close formation straight down toward the planet’s surface from their rendezvous with the orbit ship hiding behind the moon. The Earthmen knew the raid was coming, all right, and Ben could imagine the furious preparations going on below to greet the raiders at the expected target site.

  But now the time for patience and planning was over. From this point on speed, striking power, certainty of purpose and skill were the raiders’ weapons as they converged like a swarm of bees on a target too late discovered to be properly protected. Each of the raiding
ships, each of the men now piloting a ship through Earth’s atmosphere and gravitational field had his own individual assignment. The raid had been rehearsed; the advance planning had been perfected, reviewed, revised and re-perfected. It was this planning that had always, invariably, made the raids on Earth so successful. The Spacers had no equals when it came to navigational skill. They had learned through the centuries to strike hard and fast, to get their work done and to get out, always leaving behind them a wave of confusion and terror.

  Such raids were dangerous, of course, but Ben Trefon had had no time to consider the possible dangers. He never gave thought to the fact that he might not leave the surface of this planet alive. As always, the goal of the raid was simple and explicit: five million tons of wheat stored in the granaries south of the metropolis called Chicago in the center of the northern hemisphere continent; fifteen thousand tons of dressed beef stored in the vast cold storage lockers of the packing plants a little farther north in the great city; and last but not least, thirty women, not younger than fifteen years, not older than twenty-five, to fulfill the quota required by the Spacer Council at the time of its last census.

  Already the groundwork for the raid was finished. Spies on the planet’s surface, their hair dyed to conceal the telltale whiteness, had worked for many nights excavating the grain storage units at target site and placing the antigravity rods beneath them, so that the raiders had only to connect the rods to their ships’ generators to raise the bins up through Earth’s atmosphere to a place where each orbit ship could scoop them into its hold. A quick landing of a few dozen ships in the right places was all it would take; fifteen minutes of swift work by the ships’ crews, while a covering crew fought rear-guard action with any defending troops that arrived in time, a few swift moves, and the Spacers would have replenished their dwindling supplies of staple foods once again.