James Schmitz wrote only four novels in his career. Two of them, Legacy and The Demon Breed, were issued earlier in this series as part of the complete Hub stories. (Legacy as part of volume 3, Trigger & Friends; The Demon Breed as the concluding story in volume 4, The Hub: Dangerous Territory.) The longest and best-known of his novels, The Witches of Karres, will be published as the seventh and final volume in the Baen reissue.
Here is the fourth.
The two spaceskiffs appeared out of thick cloud cover behind them, not much more than five miles away. Ilken spotted them in the car screens an instant before Crowell did, said quickly, "Looks like we're being jumped!"
For a moment, watching the skiffs hurtling toward them, Crowell didn't believe it was an attack, though Ragnor training took over as automatically with him as it did with Ilken. She was slipping into the shielded seat of the gun in the center of the aircar as he turned the car's nose down, sent it racing toward the patchy dark green of the Kulkoor forest below. His finger pressed a stud and his seat's shield closed about him. "In place!" her voice said. Another stud jammed down. The canopy unfolded abruptly above, snapped down into the walls.
Ready for action.
The skiffs had halved the distance between them by then, and Crowell saw they weren't aircars as he'd assumed at first glance. They were cutting speed sharplyspace vehicles weren't normally designed for treetop level maneuverings, and forest growth swayed barely twenty feet below as he brought the car out of its dive. But he couldn't outrun them. It was a question of what kind of stuff they carried. There was no longer any question about their intentions.
The car's guns brrumpped out the short heavy stuttering of a triple defensive charge. Yellow shimmering abruptly veiled the rear screen. Lights blazed through the shimmer and ragged roars of sound shook the car. Spray torps. Neatly blocked.
Then a final flare of light to the left, too far off target to be in line with the filtering fieldsand, barely audible, the momentary hard hiss of spray against plastic and metal. Crowell looked back quickly at Ilken. She grinned reassuringly through the gun shield. "Lousy shot!" her voice commented.
That, however, was precisely what had made it dangerous. Crowell was checking the controls, slowing the car, turning it into a wide circle. No immediate evidence of significant damage. They'd been at the limit of the torp's effective range. He said, "They may get the idea and start bracketing us. Where are they now?"
"Looping overhead. Be back in thirty seconds."
"Can you take them?"
"If they come in a bit closer this pass. You playing cripple?"
"Yes. Let's finish it before they change tactics."
Crowell heeled the car half over. "I'm watching the trees, not them. Give me directions."
"More to the left," Ilken's voice told him. "They're coming. Man, they are fast! Still more to the leftsteady! Just drift . . . That's it!"
The gun erupted on the last word.
"Got them!" She half sang it.
Crowell heard explosion, righted the car and whipped it up above the wall of waving greenery toward which it had been sliding. He looked around. One skiff was a ball of boiling smoke. The otherIlken swore furiously. "Only singed him!" The gun swiveled after the plunging vehicle.
"Hold it!"
"Why?
"It's out of action. The pilot may stillthere he goes!"
A bulky object, man-shaped, dwarfed by distance, had been ejected by the crippled skiff, began its own drift to earth as the skiff smashed slanting into the forest. The figure turned over, dropped more quickly toward the trees.
"He's alive!" Ilken's voice said thinly.
"I want him alive, you bloodthirsty Mailliard!" The aircar was hurtling toward the descending figure. "We have to find out who they are."
"You'll find outif you catch him! He's going to make it down." Her voice was chilled with self-disgust.
The figure did make it down into the trees before they reached it. But, Crowell thought, that was strictly a temporary escape. The trees formed a detached small wood, a ragged oval of dense growth surrounded by open rocky ground. The skiff pilot was somewhere within the growth. Crowell brought the car to a halt above the center of the wood, inquired, "Didn't bring along a communicator, did you?"
"No." There was abrupt alertness in Ilken's voice. "Something wrong with the car comm?"
"Dead. Got hit evidently. I've been trying to raise the Base."
She said nothing. It could cause new problems. There was a spaceship around, which had sent the skiffs down to do a job. The ship might be carrying other skiffs, and if the people aboard realized the first attempt had failed, the other skiffs might soon appear. But the probability was that the ship would leave quickly and quietly. For all its crew knew, Crowell already was in communication with the Base, had reported the attack, commandeered reinforcements, alerted the Star Union sentinel ship. If the raider was above atmosphere, the sentinel ship should have it in its instruments
"Let's get our man!" he said. He unsnapped the energy carbine beside the driver's seat, stood up. "Set me down on the other side of the trees, then get back up here . . ." He broke off. "You're hurt! Why didn't you"
"Been hurt worse." Ilken had slipped out from behind the gun shield. Red wetness. She'd slit the left leg of her bush outfit from hip to knee, slapped two broad strips of sealing plastic to the side of her thigh.
"How bad is it?" He spoke almost brusquely, knowing she'd gone Mailliard on him. Any indication of anxiety here would be bad form. As it was, the short black brows above her pale eyes lifted slightly at the question. But she said, "Just my legs." She touched the plastic. "That's the two worst cuts. There's nothing that can't wait."
A ring of whiteness showed about her mouth; aside from that, her expression revealed only a trace of impatience. Crowell had never fully understood the Mailliard ability to push pain and shock to the edges of awareness as long as circumstances required it. But he did feel somewhat reassured. The skiff pilot almost certainly was a Star Union swimmerpicking him up, getting indisputable evidence that this had been a swimmer plot could be vitally important. It shouldn't take many minutes to do it. He asked, "Can you operate?"
"Yes." She proved it by walking past him, settling herself in the driver's seat. Her motions gave no evidence of discomfort. "That man's in a support suit, isn't he?" she said.
"That's what it looked like."
"He's probably armed."
"Handgun at most. They wouldn't have expected to have to get out of their skiffs."
"You want to drive him out of the trees?"
"Or get him to surrender," Crowell said. "If he bolts, try to pin him down in the open with the car. Don't kill him unless it looks like he's going to make it into one of the big forest patches."
Ilken nodded. "All right. You think he's a swimmer?"
"I'm almost sure he is."
"Supposing he's a Galestral? We're in their area. Might be something here they don't want us to stumble across."
"There just might be," Crowell agreed. "But then they wouldn't try to hit us while we are in their area. It would turn suspicion directly on themwhich is what the swimmers would like."
"Yes, you're right."
Ilken set the car in motion. They circled the growth once, not far above the treetops. If the pilot sighted them, it should discourage him from attempting to cross open ground. Then the car dipped quickly to the edge of the wood. Crowell swung down, carbine in hand, and Ilken took the car up again to assume a watch position.
Crowell slipped in among the trees. He was reasonably certain that what they'd seen ejected from the skiff was an undamaged standard support suit. If so, the man inside was subject to no gravity pull. The suit was a one-man vehicle, fairly maneuverable. It could move at a respectable speed in the open, but in heavy growth like this its propulsion devices were almost useless. The pilot might be physically unharmed, but if he was a swimmer, his emotional condition should be less satisfactory. The odds were it was the first time he'd found himself on a planet without a gravity-shielded dome about him, at the bottom of a moving ocean of atmosphere, hiding in a tangle of restlessly stirring alien life. The suit sensors provided him with sight and sound, but what they had to report was unfamiliar. And he must expect that this shifting, uneasy environment concealed a hunter or hunters. He shouldn't feel much confidence in his position. It might very well be possible to get him to surrender.
Some half a dozen leggy quadrupeds, slate-gray in color, stepped out of dense undergrowth into Crowell's path and stood for a startled moment, staring at him. They might already have been alarmed by the noise and light flashes of the nearby air battleand they could serve a purpose here! Crowell sprang suddenly forward, throwing up his arms. The herd wheeled about with squeals of fright and pounded off through the brush.
Crowell stood still again, wondering what the skiff pilot had made of the abrupt commotion. Then he stepped back behind a tree trunk.
The support suit was coming into view. Any doubts he might have had about the identity of the attackers would have been discarded now. This was how a suited null-g swimmer moved on a planet's surface in places where his propulsion devices weren't usable. The legs tiptoed along through the brush, bulky torso swaying this way and that. The man inside wasn't walking but pushing himself forward and lifting briefly into the air with each step. His free hand reached ahead, grasping at whatever was available to help pull the body along. The other hand wasn't free because it held a gun.
The big rounded head section contained no viewplate, but the swimmer could keep simultaneous watch on the area about and above him through a set of screens inside. This was as close as Crowell was likely to get to his quarry without being seen. He leveled the carbine, stepped out from behind the tree, said sharply, "Drop the gun! Stay where you are!"
The swimmer twisted aboutnot at all awkwardly or uncertainly now, but in a swift powerful motion that brought the suit's legs off the ground, swung him around to point head on, lying flat in the air, toward Crowell. The handgun was firing as he moved, ejecting a thirty-foot needle of blue-white radiance which swept in toward Crowell from the right, scything through the growth. No need for careful aim from the swimmer's point of view . . . as the knife of fire flashed through the space where Crowell stood, Crowell would die.
It was standard practice with that type of weapon, simple and fast. Against a gun already aimed, it wasn't fast enough. Crowell squeezed the carbine's trigger briefly. The support suit jerked backward and the handgun's beam winked out. The suit began to turn, was caught by the undergrowth and slid slowly down through it to the ground.
Crowell came walking forward, eyes on the suit, chewing his lip. He'd sighted at the man's shoulder, but he'd seen the suit turn sideways as he fired. Only slightly, but too far! The bolt had ripped on into the torso. The pilot almost certainly was dead.
He picked up the handgun and pocketed it, then leaned the carbine against a shrub, and unfastened the head section of the support suit. As he turned the section back, the pilot's head sagged to the side. The eyes were half closed. Crowell found no trace of throat pulse. He looked at the angle at which the beam had seared into the suit and the body within, shook his head and sealed the suit again. He moved back out of the trees the way he had come, towing the nearly weightless suit behind him.
The car settled to the ground. Ilken's tanned face looked out at him. "He's dead?"
"Quite dead. Couldn't help it. We'll take the body back to Base."
"Star Union type suit," she remarked, looking at it. "A swimmer?"
"Definitely. For the record, I want the null-g characteristics established by the medical department."
Ilken said, "There's an aircar upstairs watching us."
Startled, Crowell glanced up, saw only cloudy sky. "Not another of their skiffs?"
"Aircar. I had it in the screen. Not one from the Base, so it should be the Galestrals'." She pointed suddenly. "Up there!"
Crowell gazed in the indicated direction, saw a pale speck drift out from among cloud veils. They'd been less than fifty miles from the Galestral survey team's ship position when the attack began. "I'll try to wave them down," he said.
"Think you can trust them?"
He shrugged. "About as much as we can trust anyone on Kulkoor at present. We've no quarrel with the Galestral Company, so far. If I can use their communicator to contact the Base, it'll save us a good deal of time."
He lifted the support suit and its contents into the back section of the car, moved thirty steps away, sealed his coat pockets, took off the coat and began swinging it back and forth through the air. Perhaps a minute passed. The car above was moving very slowly but seemed to be continuing on its course. "What makes you think they're watching us?" Crowell asked.
"'They're circling. What else would they be looking at?" Ilken added, "They're starting down nowthey've seen you!"
Crowell continued to wave the coat until it became obvious that the aircar was, in fact, descending toward them. Then he slipped the coat on, fastened it. "They may have caught the shooting from a distance," he said.
"Probably did," Ilken agreed.
He looked over at her. "Legs bothering you?"
"Not as much as they will be."
"We want to get attention for them as soon as we can."
Ilken, eyes on the approaching aircar, remarked, "Legs might have become a problem if we'd had to walk back to Baseor even the fifty miles to the Galestral ship. But we'd probably have made it, either way."
"We'dwhat are you talking about?"
She nodded at the console. "Power section took a hit. Gauge shows two minutes flight leftand it's dropping."
Crowell swore. "Why didn't you tell me before?"
"No sense worrying you with it until we found out whether the Galestrals would come down for us. You know, I'm looking forward to this! Always did want to meet a Galestral . . ."