The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

and it hung from a bush which was close to a ten foot tree!
    Rip stumbled across to drop into the Com-tech’s place. But his expression of worry changed to one of simple astonishment as he saw that picture.
    “Where are we?”
    “You name it,” Dane had had longer to adjust, the excitement of an explorer sighting virgin territory worked in his veins, banishing fatigue. “It must be the Big Burn!”
    “But,” Rip shook his head slowly as if with that gesture to deny the evidence before his eyes, “that country’s all bare rock. I’ve seen pictures—”
    “Of the outer rim,” Dane corrected, having already solved that problem for himself. “This must be farther in than any survey ship ever came. Great Spirit of Outer Space, what has happened here?”
    Rip had enough technical training to know how to get part of the answer. He leaned halfway across the com, and was able to flick down a lever with the very tip of his longest finger. Instantly the cabin was filled with a clicking so loud as to make an almost continuous drone of sound.
    Dane knew that danger signal, he didn’t need Rip’s words to underline it for him.
    “That’s what’s happened. This country is pile ‘hot’ out there!”
    CHAPTER XIV
    SPECIAL MISSION
    That click, the dial beneath the counter, warned them that they were as cut off from the luxuriance outside as if they were viewing a scene on Mars or Sargol from their present position. To go beyond the shielding walls of the spacer into that riotous green world would sentence them to death as surely as if the Patrol was without, with a flamer trained on their hatch. There was no escape from that radiation—it would be in the air one breathed, strike though one’s skin. And yet the wilderness flourished and beckoned.
    “Mutations—” Rip mused. “Space, Tau’d go wild if he could see it!”
    And that mention of the Medic brought them back to the problem which had earthed them. Dane leaned back against the slanting wall of the cabin.
    “We have to have a Medic—”
    Rip nodded without looking away from the screen.
    “Can one of the flitters be shielded?” The Cargo-apprentice persisted.
    “That’s a thought! Ali should know—” Rip reached for the inter-com mike. “Engines!”
    “So you are alive ?” Ali’s voice had a bite in it. “About time you’re contacting. Where are we? Besides being lopsided from a recruit’s scrambled set-down, I mean.”
    “Inthe Big Burn. Come top-side. Wait—how’s Weeks?”
    “He has a devil’s own headache, but he hasn’t blacked out yet. Looks like his immunity holds in part. I’ve sent him bunkside for a while with a couple of pain pills. So we’ve made it—”
    He must have left to join them for when Rip answered: “After a fashion,” into the mike there was no reply.
    And the clang of his boot plates on the ladder heralded his arrival at their post. There was an interval for him to view the outer world and accept the verdict of the counter and then Rip voiced Dane’s question:
    “Can we shield one of the flitters well enough to cross that? I can’t take the Queen up and earth her again—”
    “I know you can’t!” the acting-engineer cut in. “Maybe you could get her off world, but you’ll come close to blasting out when you try for another landing. Fuel doesn’t go on forever—though some of you space jockeys seem to think it does. The flitter? Well, we’ve some spare rocket linings. But it’s going to be a job and a half to get those beaten out and reassembled. And, frankly, the space whirly one who flies her had better be suited and praying loudly when he takes off. We can always try—” He was frowning, already busied with the problem which was one for his department.
    So with intervals of snatched sleep, hurried meals and the time which must be given to tending their unconscious charges, Rip and Dane became only hands to be directed by Ali’s brain and garnered knowledge. Weeks slept off the worst of his pain and, though he complained of weakness, he tottered back on duty to help.
    The flitter—an air sled intended to hold three men and supplies for exploring trips on strange-worlds—was first stripped of all non-essentials until what remained was not much more than the pilot’s seat and the motor. Then they labored to build up a shielding of the tough radiation dulling alloy which was used to line rocket tubes. And they could only praise the foresight of Stotz who carried such a full supply of