Meet Me at Infinity by James Tiptree Jr. Read Free Book Online

superconductors I get you. Beautiful.”
    The uproar dwindled to a mewling in Imray’s speaker.
    “You let us go down nice, Morgan, vernt?”
    Silence. Imray clapped his fist to his chest and his head slumped.
    “Is too much, son,” he wheezed and retreated down the shaft.
    “Counting to autopilot,” said Sylla. Quent coded feverishly as deceleration grabbed them. On the screens the arid, undistinguished planet whirled closer.
    The autopilot took hold unceremoniously and spiraled them in, shaken but right side up. When the roil cleared they looked across a moonlit field to a cluster of sheds around the antennae rig. There were no lights.
    “They’ve all sloped off, sir,” said Pomeroy. “Nothing we can do here till morning.”
    “Mr. Pomeroy, you speak the native language,” said Quent. “I will meet you at the cargo lock. Have the sled ready.”
    “But sir—”
    “Mr. Svensk, am I correct that we need no special masks or suiting on this planet?”
    Svensk gave a sighing exhalation.
    “No need,” he croaked.
    They followed Quent in silence while he broke out two field kits and two ballistic hand lasers. At the cargo lock he opened both ports and ordered Pomeroy into the sled.
    “Lieutenant Sylla, you will take over the ship. One of you will be on the bridge at all times. If we’re not back by sunrise, make what investigation you can without endangering the ship. If you can’t help us without hazard to the ship, lift off at once and signal the facts to Farbase. Understood?”
    Sylla’s eyes were popping.
    “Understood, Acting Captain!” He sketched a salute.
    Svensk watched in silence, his bony head folded to his shoulders in the gravity.
    Quent launched the sled out into the moonlight. The country below was flat scrubland gashed by a few dark arroyos, now dry. The “city” was a huddle of hivelike buildings with a central plaza. Quent hovered by a torch-lit structure, a shrine. Nothing moved.
    “No damage visible so far. We’ll go down and talk to the chief.”
    “Be careful, sir,” Pomeroy warned uneasily.
    In the plaza they pounded and shouted at the door of the largest hive-house. It was finally opened by a small squat Sopwithian entirely draped in a softly gleaming robe.
    “Tell him we’re friends. Where’s the chief?”
    The doorkeeper scuttled off on his knuckles, robes jingling. The inside of the adobe hive was a labyrinth of basket-work passages, every surface bossed with bits of metal and colored tassels. The native returned, beckoning, and they scrambled up a wicker corridor to a chamber where an even broader Sopwithian in a shinier robe sat impassive in a lanterned alcove. The ceiling was so low even Pomeroy had to squat.
    He gurgled at the chief, who replied briefly, now and then flapping his long robed forelimbs with a sharp jangle. The raiders, Pomeroy reported, had burned several farms northeast of town and carried off the families. Herdsmen had spied them roasting and eating the captives beside their ship.
    “All right,” said Quent. He ducked his head to the chief and they scrambled out to their sled.
    He took off in a howling rush northeast. Beyond the town the pasture scrub stretched barren to a line of mesa, all brightly lit by the big moon. Here and there were small beehive farms set in irrigated gardens.
    “Where are those burned farms?” Quent peered. “Where’s that ship?”
    “Take care, sir,” Pomeroy pleaded. “Them Drakes’ll come on us like devils—”
    Quent began to fly a low search pattern. As he circled a farm heads popped out.
    “They’re scared to death, sir. Think we’re Drakes. Pitiful.”
    “Frightened.” Quent frowned around the moonlit horizon. “Ah, what’s that?”
    Pomeroy writhed nervously.
    “That’s a burnt one, all right. No need to look farther.”
    Quent circled the blackened shell. Suddenly he skidded the sled into the farmyard and jumped out, kicking ashes. In a moment he was back and flung the sled airborne. He seized the