Yuen-Mong's Revenge (2 page)

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Atun did not remember how long he had remained immobilized in the
sponge webbing that kept him pinned in the pilot seat. It was as if he
were waiting for something to tell him whether he was still alive or not,
whether what he was experiencing was the altered state of being dead —
a state he did not believe existed — or simply the utter exhaustion from
the bottomless fear he had felt while plunging helplessly toward Aros.
No, he was alive. He could actually sense his pulse where the webbing
pressed against his neck. What had happened? All he remembered was
that shortly after separating from the mother ship and dipping below the
outer edge of the ring, the craft had refused to respond to his commands
and then this fear, a fear more paralyzing than he thought was possible.

     
After a few seconds of hesitation, he issued the voice command to
release the webbing. Nothing happened. Something was wrong. It took
him a few second to know what. The three control and systems status
screens only showed horizontal noise. He touched the middle screen. No
window appeared. He touched different places. Nothing. Had the AI unit
switched off by itself? Was that the reason why he had lost control over
the craft? No, the red power light was still on. He repeated the command
again, somewhat louder. No response. He tried the command to turn on
the screens. Again no change. Not even the light for voice reception
blinked.

     
Straining to reach the override button for the mechanical release, he
stretched the webbing a fraction, but not enough. He looked around the
cabin of the shuttle. Nothing seemed damaged, except for a few items
that had been dislodged and lay scattered on the floor. What miracle had
happened that the craft had survived the crash? He tried again to stretch
the webbing to reach the release.
Damn it!
Why did the AI unit have to
fail right when he needed it? Concentrating all his strength into his right
arm, he was just able to press the button, and the webbing snapped loose.

     
Freed from his restraint, he did not quite know what to do next. He
was still too overwhelmed.
Report to the mother ship, but how without
voice commands?
A vague memory surfaced from one of his earliest
navigation drills. Somewhere on the flight console was a communication
link independent of the AI unit for just such an emergency. He scanned
over the flight console. At its far right was a drawer he had never opened
before. He did now. It contained a set of old-fashioned earphones with a
microphone mouthpiece. He switched it on and shouted: "KB379, mayday, mayday," repeating it at short intervals three times more. No
response, all he could hear was high-pitched static.

     
"What the heck is going on?" he swore, remembering that he had already failed to hail his ship up near the ring, right after he had lost
control.

     
Not sure whether he could trust his feet, he stood up gingerly and
looked out the window. His view was obstructed by tall grasses. He
would have to climb on top of the craft to see where he was. Was that
safe? Then he noticed that his undergarments felt humid to his skin. Had
he wetted himself? He reached inside. There was not doubt, and he could
not help laughing. It was a small price to pay for surviving a crash. He
should have worn the anti-G pants, but then he had not intended to drop
all the way down to the surface.

     
He removed the offending garments and went to the back of the craft
to wipe himself with a disposable hygienic cloth from the dispenser. But
even that unit did not want to release its contents. Prying it open, he got
out a couple of swipes. After cleaning himself he put on new undergarments and stretch support pants. Then he activated the shuttle door.
Nothing happened.

     
"What’s the matter? Nothing working anymore?" he cried in
frustration.

     
If he wanted to get out, he had to use the emergency ceiling hatch. The
mechanism opened easily and he climbed onto the roof of the shuttle. It
was sitting in the middle of a vast field of three-yard-high gray grass
tufts. The craft had cut a half-kilometer swath through it before it came
to rest. A narrow streak of discolored green continued up the slope of the
forest canopy all the way to a ridge he estimated to be about a thousand
meters higher than the swamp. Its curvature, steep at the top, flattening
out at the bottom, provided the perfect setting for a crash landing. He
could not believe his luck.

     
The field was surrounded by forests. Opposite the hill he had
skimmed down were some rocky outcrops on a bare hilltop. Behind it, in
the far distance, he could discern higher ragged mountain ridges, possibly
2000 meters or even higher. The sun had just risen behind them. From its
position on the horizon, he guessed that he had landed on the northern
hemisphere of the planet at a latitude between 30 and 45 degrees.

     
He could not see any living thing, not even insects, but the air tasted
sweet and pleasant, a welcome contrast to the recycled air of the craft that
always had a hint of disinfectant. He took a few deep breaths, filling his
lungs and then emptying them completely, suddenly aware of every cell
in his body. It felt good to be alive.

     
Back inside the craft he was again struck by the stale air and noticed
that the recycling unit was silent. If it took him more than a day to get the
AI unit back on, he would run out of oxygen unless he kept the hatch
open, but would that be safe on this world? He would deal with that
problem if or when it came to that. Hopefully he should be able to get the
craft ready for liftoff before then. There were still some ten hours of
daylight left of the twenty or so hour day on Aros. He switched on his
wristunit. Its small holoscreen — a three-dimensional image projected
by the unit into a sphere — failed to open. How odd? He would have to
be guided by the sun to guess the time or any other data monitored by
unit, such as outside and body temperature, heart rate, until he could get
the shuttle’s AI unit working again.

     
Moving the webbing out of the way—it was supposed to retract automatically once the release button had been pushed—he seated himself at
the console. He again tried unsuccessfully to get a response to various
voice commands. Maybe he had to go back to the bare basics, namely the
keyboard hidden under the top of the flight console. When had he last
typed on a keyboard? He could not remember.

     
But, he had no more luck with keyboard commands. They did not
even register on the screens. Maybe a vital connection had come loose.
He hit the outside of the walls of the flight console firmly several times.
Nothing. He tried again. Maybe he should power up the AI unit from
scratch. He turned the power off and waited several minutes before
turning it on again. The power light duly lit up, and the screens became
active, flickered, but the AI unit still refused to respond to any commands. And these devices were supposed to be failure-proof.

     
Maybe the service manual might help. Without the AI unit, he would
have to use the tablet — another gadget from a few hundred years back
still used as a backup. But that even refused to turn on.

     
Hadn’t that old navigation instructor joked about each craft having
a paper manual as the final back-up?
They had all laughed then. But now
this was not funny anymore. Thank God they still included that as part of
the equipment. After searching through various drawers, he finally found
it behind the panel giving access to the interior of the flight console. He
took it out, almost gingerly. It felt strange holding a book in his hands.
The last time he had done that was at the Academy of Science, five years
back, when one of the professors had arranged a guided tour through the
physical scientific library that held remnants of books and journals
published four or five hundred years ago.

     
Over the next two hours, he went through that manual, page by page,
studying and trying a score of basic checks and procedures listed under
faults. Nothing even provoked a response of the AI unit. He quickly
scanned through several of the more advanced maintenance procedures.
They all involved dismantling parts of the unit for individual testing and
promised to be lengthy affairs that would take him more than a day. It
might therefore be prudent to explore first his immediate physical
environment, to ensure his safety and, particularly find drinking water
and possibly food. With the AI unit not working, he could not even
operate the food dispenser or get water, unless he dismantled both units,
nor did he know how long the recycled water would be safe to drink or
how long the ingredients of the food units would keep without the
continuous testing done through the AI unit. The emergency rations in his
survival kit would not last more than six days.

     
He decided to climb the hill to the east. The tops of the rock outcrops
might offer a good view of the area, and he should be able to reach it in
about an hour, provided the passage through the tall grass tufts and the
forest undergrowth was possible and the planet did not spring any other
unpleasant surprises on him.

     
He switched off the main power supply and then slipped his rip-and-scratch-protective outer gear over his clothing, donned his helmet, its
protective visor pushed back, strapped his survival pack to his back, hung
the night-vision binoculars around his neck, shouldered his laser gun,
attached an extra charge pack to his belt, and put on his protective finger
gloves. Only then did it occur to him that carrying all this gear he would
not get through the ceiling hatch. So he took most of it off, placed it onto
the roof, and put it on again, once he was outside.

     
After closing the hatch he looked for a way to get down from the
shuttle roof. Finally, he just let himself fall backwards onto a grass bunch
and slid to the ground. He fingered one of the sharp grass blades and let
it go promptly when saw it cut the outer layer of the glove. Alarmed he
checked his protective clothing and discovered several superficial cuts
on his sleeves and pant legs. He suddenly worried how he would get back
onto the shuttle roof again.

     
The grasses almost completely blocked out the sky.
Which direction
is that hill now?
he wondered. Using the laser gun and the survival pack
as side protection, he searched a path over bare earth between the huge
tufts in the direction he guessed the hill to lie. He was relieved when he
emerged much quicker than expected and was almost immediately under
the forest cover. To his surprise, there was no undergrowth, but only
smooth earth, as if an army of gardeners had meticulously cleared all
plants and raked away any leaves and debris. Even the trees seemed to be
spaced evenly apart, allowing quick progress through the ranks of smooth
dark brown trunks. Only occasionally did a thin leafless pole protrude
from the ground, usually at a place where another tree might have stood
some time earlier.

     
The open ground at the top of the hill was either rock or the same
clean-swept earth as in the forest. The rock outcrops were more difficult
to scale than he expected. He had no choice but to shed his gear. He
placed the survival pack, the laser gun and the spare charge pack on a
ledge at shoulder height and then climbed the ten to twelve yards to the
top of the rocks. Looking back in the direction he had come, he was again
amazed by the swath his shuttle had imprinted into the forest canopy and
the giant grasses. Had it not been for this, he probably would not have
been able to locate the shuttle. From this distance, it blended perfectly
into the gray grasses.

     
He clambered across to the other side of the rock. A small valley
sloped away, its center an oblong open field—meadow came to his mind,
except there was no visible vegetation. A movement caught his eye less
than two hundred yards from his viewpoint. He quickly cowered down
and observed what was happening through his binoculars. It was a group
of six small, but stocky men, only wearing a garment that looked like a
loin cloth. Their brown skins, curly black hair—two of them already
graying, the brown cloth, all blended perfectly in with the color of the
field. That was why he had not noticed them until they moved.
Human
or at least human like?
The data on Aros had not mentioned any presence
of intelligent life. They were armed with bows and arrows.
Savages?
Hunters and gatherers?
Two were cutting up a featherless bat-like
creature, about equal to them in size.

     
Suddenly, he heard a peremptory whistle. The men immediately stood
up and reached for their bows. Following the direction of the sound, Atun
saw a being—
human
no doubt
—light-skinned and tall in comparison to
the men.
Female?
She was standing just outside the trees, twirling a sling
in her hand. She also carried a bow, though much bigger than the ones of
the men. A second, equally commanding whistle sounded, and the group
of six howled angrily. Five immediately ran for the opposite forest cover,
while the sixth grabbed a big piece of the bird before following them.
The intruder whipped up the sling and barely a second later, the man
cried out in pain, dropped his burden and ran limping after the others.