Son of the Stars Page 5

  “We have a wave that you evidently haven’t discovered. Its speed of propagation approaches infinity.”

  “Can you build the equipment?”

  “I don’t know enough to construct and calibrate a generator of those waves. If I only had that much, perhaps I could reach them as close as they are—but the equipment aboard ship must be completely destroyed from what I saw of the communications chamber.”

  He shook his head slowly in abandonment of the hope he’d briefly held. He touched the panels of Ron’s transmitter appreciatively. “It must be—fun, anyway.”

  As quickly, he changed the subject. “Can we go out to the ship this afternoon—to bury them?”

  “As soon as the clothes come. Won’t there be many besides those of your family? Won’t we need help to take care of them all?”

  “Yes, but for my father and my brother I would like to have only you present.”

  “Of course.”

  Clonar leaned against the transmitting desk, his eyes staring out the window. He continued speaking almost as if to himself.

  “Many spacemen go out and are never heard from again. We understand that is the price for knowledge of distant worlds. Life goes on at home.

  “But for me, it’s as if I were the last one left alive on the planet, and all the rest of those I know are gone. Can you imagine such a thing, Ron?”

  “I can try, but none of us can really feel it who haven’t experienced it. I’ll do everything I can to make Earth your home, but I know we can never replace the things you have lost forever.”

  “If you can understand that,” said Clonar, “then it will be easier. And I will hope that someday your mother will understand and like me.”

  Until almost noon they talked, always working toward enlargement of Clonar’s vocabulary. A few minutes before twelve there was a sudden sharp buzz from a gadget on the wall. It buzzed again—three, four times. Sharp and hard.

  “That’s Mom,” said Ron. “She complained about having to yell out the back door. Three buzzes mean she’s mad about something. Four indicates a medium tornado.”

  “Tornado?”

  Laughing, they moved toward the house.

  Mrs. Barron was already at the kitchen door when they left the lab.

  “Ron, come here quick and tell me what this means!”

  She held the door aside while they entered, then marched past them to the front window of the house.

  “Look out there!”

  Ron stared through the window. Parked at either side of the house were a couple of jeeps, and in each was an armed MP with Air Force insignia on his uniform.

  “Mrs. Peabody called me on the telephone a few minutes ago,” said Ron’s mother, “and told me she tried to enter the house. Those two imbeciles out there refused to let her in without a pass!”

  Understanding swept over Ron in a smothering wave.

  “Middleton!” he said in disbelief. “You’d expect them to throw a guard around the ship, but no one but Middleton would put a guard at our house.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Have you called Dad?”

  “I tried. He wasn’t in the office.”

  “Maybe he’s still with Middleton. But wherever they are, this is the Colonel’s doing.”

  Clonar regarded the situation with a puzzled frown. “What is it, Ron? I don’t understand.”

  For once Ron was at a loss to try to make the stranger understand. He was aware that Clonar’s world was unified and knew no such things as large armies and mountains of weapons for interspecies fighting. Neither was there crime or insanity.

  “They are guards,” he said, feeling the hopelessness of any term he might choose.

  “Guards?”

  “To keep out any people who might want to harm you.”

  Clonar’s eyes looked startled. It had been the wrong word again.

  “I mean there are people who might think you know something valuable to them, and they might try to use force to get it from you.”

  Clonar was bewildered. He didn’t understand at all. Dismayed, he turned again to look at the jeeps and the unhappy MP’s, and the slow changing knot of passers-by who stared.

  “I guess they’ve got some in the back alley, too,” said Ron.

  “We can’t put up with this,” his mother said irritably. “We’ve got to—”

  She stopped abruptly with a glance at Clonar.

  “Please, Mother,” said Ron. “It’s Middleton’s fault. Of all the dumb desk-jockeys in the Air Force I don’t see why Dad had to ring in Middleton on this. They’ve got officers who could understand this thing.”

  “What will I tell Mrs. Peabody and the rest of my friends? That they have to get a pass from the FBI before they can come in our home?”

  “Well get it straightened out, Mother. We don’t have to put up with everything this dumb Middleton is going to think up from now on.

  “Let’s forget it for the moment, huh? How about some lunch?”

  “It’s all ready. I was just about to call you.”

  “Thanks, Mother. Clonar and I are going back out to his ship this afternoon—if those jeep riders don’t try to keep us in the house.”

  As they finished the last sandwich, the delivery truck from the department store drove up. From the corner of his eye, Ron saw the driver get out and be turned back by the MP’s.

  Rage gathered in his throat as he raced for the front door.

  “Wait a minute!” he called.

  The driver turned back as he ran down the walk. The MP’s closed in on him.

  “Nobody goes in the house,” said one of them.

  The driver looked at Ron, ignoring them. “What goes on with these meat-heads at your house, Ron?”

  “Don’t blame these boys. They are just doing their job. It’s the fault of the chief meat-head on up the line. We’ll get it straightened out. You got the pants and other things?”

  “I’ve got to see what’s in the package,” said the MP.

  Silently, Ron opened it for inspection. “I’m going out in a few minutes,” he said. “I hope nobody’s going to try to stop me.”

  “You and your friend?”

  “Me and my friend.”

  “Not without one of us following you.”

  He turned away, considering the ease of ditching a jeep with his hotrod.

  A voice spoke suddenly out of the congestion of passers-by on the sidewalk. “Ron! Wait a minute—I want to talk to you.”

  It was Dan Gibbons, the local AP man. Ron knew him from winning the speed runs on the East Flats and getting his picture on the AP wire through Dan.

  “What goes on here?” said Dan. “Anything I can make a story of? An ordinary citizen doesn’t have MP’s sitting around in jeeps in front of his house and keeping people out for nothing.”

  Ron hesitated. Sooner or later the story would get out, and nobody would get it any straighter than Dan, which would be best for Clonar and everyone else.

  But he hesitated saying anything until he had conferred with his father about it.

  He nodded slowly. “There’s a story, all right—and a good one. I’ll give it to you just as soon as I can, Dan, but it’s not ready to break yet.”

  “Just a hint. It must be something good. Flying saucers. Little green men from Venus. You dabble in things like that—it would be just up your line.”

  Ron felt a sudden cold chill shrouding him from head to toe. And then he realized with relief that

  Dan’s words were just a joking guess. How surprised he would be when he found how close to the truth it was.

  “Not now. Later, I may need your help.”

  “I’ll do whatever I can if you’ll let me in on what’s up-“You can count on a call,” promised Ron.

  When Clonar was dressed, it would have been difficult to tell him from a student of Longview High, Ron thought. His skin was already the shade of a good suntan. The only strangeness that could not be hidden was his hair, but combed and
oiled a bit it had a black sheen that hid the texture except at very close inspection. And there were the six-fingered hands.

  “You’ll do,” said Ron approvingly. “Let’s be on our way.”

  They wore rough slacks for the job ahead. With shovels and picks loaded into the rear compartment of the car, they started off.

  A jeep motor started as they made preparations, and the little car coughed energetically after the hotrod.

  Through the town and along the Flats Ron watched the jeep in his mirror. The longer he watched the more irritated he became with the presumptuous arrogance of Colonel Middleton.

  “I may be sticking my neck way out,” he muttered, “but I’m going to lose that monkey.”

  Clonar looked at him quizzically, wondering at the exact meaning of that combination of words, but he said nothing as the wind whipped against his face.

  The car picked up speed as they climbed through the foothills. It was entirely possible that the accompanying MP did not even know where the ship was. Counting on this, he drove past the point of turn-off on the highway.

  He gasped with dismay as he did so. The place was no longer hidden. Two great six-wheelers that had obviously been emptied of tons of equipment were in the clearing. Guards and technicians moved about possessively.

  The car roared to a halt and backed around. The jeep driver glanced darkly at Ron, understanding his intended move.

  “I wouldn’t try to think up any more tricks like that,” he said.

  Ron drew up and parked beside the trucks. He and Clonar began getting out the shovels.

  “I wonder if they have done any harm to—the bodies,” murmured Clonar. “Would they do that?”

  “I don’t know. I suspect we’re going to find out a lot of things in the next few minutes.”

  They moved away toward the trail with the tools. Almost at once, a guard barred their way with leveled rifle.

  “There is no entrance to this area. You are on United States Military Preserve.”

  Ron felt his anger wash away prudence. “What would you be guarding so carefully? Wouldn’t be a flying saucer or anything like that, would it?”

  The guard’s eyes widened. “You’d better move on, fellas.”

  “Listen! I’m Ron Barron. I found this ship and my father brought Colonel Middleton to it this morning. This man here is the owner and surviving crewman. You will move aside, if you please, and allow him access to his own property!”

  “It may have been his once, bud, but right now you’re encroaching on the property of Uncle Sammy. Get moving!”

  Chapter 6 Desecration

  Clonar’s face darkened now as he understood the command. His hand shot out and closed upon the guard’s wrist. Clonar was swift and powerful, but if the guard had been eager to kill, his bullet would have found Clonar’s body. As it was, the gun dropped, the bullet exploding into the ground at their feet.

  Instantly, other soldiers, including the jeep driver, rushed up and seized Ron and Clonar.

  Ron cried out too late to his friend. “Stop it, Clonar. This won’t get us anywhere!”

  “It will get you twenty years,” snarled the guard, rubbing his crushed wrist.

  The jeep driver held Ron with arms pinned behind him. Ignoring his helplessness, Ron blasted at the guard, “Can’t you get it through your fat head that this fellow owns that ship? He is the only survivor of its crew. You are the intruders. Tell that to the Colonel from me!”

  The guard’s angry face was swept with indecision. He looked to the jeep driver. “Is this guy really telling the truth?”

  “As far as I know. Hank and I are guarding the house. We’ve got orders to cover them twenty-four hours a day. It’s straight from the Old Man.”

  “I dunno—I didn’t sign up for any of this modern man-from-Mars stuff. I guess I belong to the older generation already. Let’s get down there and see what Hornsby has to say about these two guys. It’s his baby, anyway.”

  The MP nudged Ron in the back. “Will you guys be good if we let go?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’d better leave those tools here. Just what did you think you were going to do, anyway? Bury the ship?”

  “The people in it,” said Ron quietly.

  The soldiers hesitated. “O.K. But you’ll have to see what Hornsby says about it, anyway.”

  They moved silently through the forest and down the slope toward the bottom of the ravine. Ron felt sick at heart. He should have told no one about the ship’s location until he’d had a chance to learn Clonar’s wishes. But it was too late now. He could imagine technicians scurrying like pack rats through those sacred corridors.

  As they approached the ship, he saw that a hatch had been forced in the top of the vessel. They moved down a short, circular stairway and came to a central area from which corridors radiated like the spokes of a wheel. But only half of these were in existence, the others being shut off by the wrecked portion. Emergency lights had been widely strung by the technicians, and from somewhere came the popping of a small gas engine supplying power.

  The guards led them to an adjacent chamber. Inside, a man sat before a desk examining written materials found in the ship. His face was round and smooth and pink, and as he glanced up and saw them approaching its color deepened to a furious red.

  “Captain Hornsby—” the guard began.

  “What does this intrusion mean?” the captain demanded. “You were told to deny entrance to all comers.”

  “Sir, I—”

  “Return at once to your post. You will be penalized later for this disobedience of orders. We shall deal with these intruders here.”

  The two soldiers went out silently and the officer eyed the two boys from head to foot.

  “Were you not told that you were trespassing on military preserve?”

  For a moment Ron did not speak. He wondered how it was that the moment some men were given uniforms, they disgraced them by dropping all humanness of thinking. He guessed that Hornsby had once been a minor technical executive of some company, and had stayed on where a captain’s bars added to the weight he could throw around.

  “Well—what have you to say for yourselves? This intrusion is a serious matter I”

  “Mister,” said Ron slowly, “who do you suppose this ship belongs to?”

  The captain’s eyes narrowed and his unpleasant grin showed his teeth set tight. “Shortly, young man, you will no doubt have the privilege of learning how to address an officer. I only wish that I might have the opportunity of teaching you myself! I suppose you are going to tell me that this property of the U. S. Air Force belongs to you?”

  “No. Not me. It belongs to my friend, here. He is called Clonar, and he is the only surviving member of the crew which flew this ship from its home world.”

  For a moment the captain’s jaw sagged. But only for a moment. He reached out a hand toward Clonar, his face changing expression with chameleon swiftness. You couldn’t win, thought Ron.

  “This is a wonderful privilege!” said Hornsby. “Why didn’t you tell me at first? The Colonel said you were at the Barron home, and I intended to look you up and invite you out here. I apologize for my rudeness, but you understand how careful we must be.”

  Clonar remained silent. Hornsby looked at Ron. “I understood you had been quite successful in teaching him English?”

  “He understands the language, but the actions of Earthmen he sometimes finds very baffling.”

  “Ah, yes, of course! The customs and habits will naturally be different. But I am sure we can understand each other on a technical level.”

  He turned to Clonar. “This ship interests me greatly, but I have some suggestions to offer regarding the aerodynamical construction—”

  Ron broke in. “Captain Hornsby, this ship travels faster than light in outer space.”

  For a moment Ron thought he had delivered an effective blow. Hornsby was silent and seemed, actually, to deflate just a trifle. Then he struck out again at a s
immering pace.

  “It’s unbelievable! Is it actually true?” he asked of Clonar.

  Clonar nodded. Ron felt sick at the expression on his face.

  “It’s incredible that they didn’t bring you down here in the first place to tell us what you know of these matters!” said Hornsby. “But, as military commander of this project, I command your services to explain the power plant and other militarily useful devices of this vessel.”

  Ron opened his mouth, but Clonar signaled him to silence.

  “I shall be glad to,” said Clonar. “We may begin at once, if you wish.”

  The Captain nodded, and stalked out bearing a flashlight for use in still-dark corridors. He led the way as if he, not Clonar, were conducting the exploration of the ship.

  “You don’t have to put up with this,” Ron whispered as they hung back, “I know we can get Hornsby off our necks, in time.”

  “It’s all right. I just want to make sure the power plant was destroyed. But I don’t understand, Ron—I don’t understand this man and the others we have met. They are not like you. What is the matter with them?”

  “They are afraid,” said Ron, “afraid of everything that they do not understand. That is true of many earth people.”

  Hornsby seemed suddenly aware that he had marched off ahead of them and waited impatiently while they caught up.

  “It is the power plant we are most interested in, Mr. Clonar,” he said. “We understand, of course, that it is atomic in nature, but we need the technological details to understand its construction and operation. Were you in a position to become familiar with these?”

  “Yes. I was assigned to plant maintenance during the flight.”

  “That is good,” said Hornsby. “I was afraid you might have been a bug collector or something of the sort attached to the expedition.” He laughed in halfhearted joviality. “We always send out such with our own expeditions, you know.”

  Clonar led the way on down the corridor, flashing the light that Hornsby surrendered to him. The corridor almost paralleled the edge of the wreckage, Ron sensed. Clonar slowed. The walls seemed distorted here, and then the light shone on the end that was simply pinched together.