Come Back Page 6

  "Seven hundred local time." She replied in a wooden voice. "If there is a local time."

  It was coming home to them all just what we were going to land on. It hit me as well but I'm an inward-looking pragmatist. If your name is on the bullet, it'll get you, but so far our names weren't on any bullet, indeed we had been specially protected from bullets or whatever it was.

  "Four minutes." Mary said.

  "Lock all chairs." I ordered. "Check restraints."

  No one answered as the seconds ticked away. Just as the zeros appeared on the screen, a loud clang came from overhead and the lander floated free of the main ship. We were in quite a high orbit, but the auto pilot solved that by a hefty blast from the forward motors bringing the cloud levels close, so close we could almost touch them. The terminator rolled away underneath us as the lander raced ahead of the sun. The motors fired in short burns, attitude jets puffing us into the right descent angle. A faint whistling noise made itself heard. The Earth's outer atmosphere was kissing the hull. The whistle grew steadily until it became a roar of sound, strong vibration shaking the airframe. Nervously, I watched the instruments, but deceleration values were moderate, the computer was being intelligent and bringing us down in a delicate curve. The flame of burning air over the front screen slowed and stopped, ground details springing to life on the screen as ionised air bled off and we regained optical and radio frequencies.

  "On track." Mary said tersely. I nodded and watched the inertial display. The track called for a wide sweep over the sea until we crossed the French coast. We had the wings fully extended now, speed down to three hundred and fifty knots.

  "Fifty thousand." I reported. "Starting turbines." We couldn't just glide and hope to crash land in the right spot, we had to have engine power, lots of it for the vertical descent on to an overgrown ex-runway that I hoped didn't have any awkward lumps on it. The navigation panel showed us dead on track, slightly too low so I gave us a small boost of engines. We went through a high cloud layer and suddenly, there was the Med, sparkling in morning sunshine. I admit the sight gave me a lump in the throat, we had been away so long and none of us knew, until we saw what was under us, just how strong our ties were to this beautiful, bountiful planet.

  Presently we were down to fifteen thousand, sliding down the flight path, the engines in flight idle. I hadn't done a thing except gee up the airspeed, the computer was doing fine. The French coast slid under us, Jules and Marie craning their necks to study the landscape. Forest or scrub seemed to be right down to the beach from this height, but the river showed clearly. Our computer was fixed on the co-ordinates of that French airfield, having in its guts the position of every square inch of this planet. The ground grew nearer as we descended past three thousand, forest, green carpet, flashing by.

  "Five miles." Mary said, peering at her monitor.

  "It is near the river." Jules pointed out excitedly, his dark hair and swarthy, thin face crammed next to Marie's brunette prettiness. The river bank was solid trees, and some were damned tall, over a hundred feet according to the read out. Slowing down to fifty knots, the vertical jets cut in with a thud as we swung slowly over the river heading for the patch of low vegetation found by the ship's scanner.

  "There!" Linda's arm snaked over my shoulder. The trees came to an end and an avenue, a long glade presented itself.

  "Three one five degrees." Mary said. "More or less agrees with the runway axis."

  I grunted and took us on a slow run up the glade only fifty feet up, watching on the ground monitors to see if unwelcome obstacles popped up. "Looks good." I muttered, checking on the fuel state. Get it on the ground now and we'd have a reserve, an opportunity to go somewhere else if this was a no go. Swinging the lander round I retraced our path until the spot I wanted appeared underneath. The jets were blasting small shrubs and undergrowth, but it seemed flat, so I lowered us until, gingerly, the landing skids bounced and settled. The turbines ran down and silence arrived.

  "Well, we're here." I said into a tense silence. "The promised land."

  Chapter 5

  ROCK BOTTOM

  Hesitantly, in silence, we all scrambled down the access ladder until we stood in a group breathing the air, listening to the breeze ruffle the leaves of the trees. Under our feet was grass, tall grass with seed heads leaning over in the wind, and taller shrubs with tiny flowers grew in profusion with saplings of larger growth standing up. We looked over a sea of low vegetation until maybe two hundred yards away the forest proper began, a wall of green that circled our oasis of clear sky.

  Jules let out a long breath. "Olive trees, cypress, holm, sweet chestnut." He chanted as if he was telling us the names of Gods."

  "Lavender, mimosa." Marie agreed with a dreamy look on her face.

  "Firewood." I grunted, breaking the spell.

  I had no intention of trying to run this outfit as if it was a military unit. They all had much bigger brains than me and I hoped they were going to use them, but they all turned and looked at me as if I should post a sheet of standing orders on the nearest tree. Linda, naturally, told them what to do but they thought she was telling them what I had decided instead of it all popping out of her own head while I stood there and looked intelligent.

  We had to have a base and that was where the lander was standing like a giant white beetle, wings outstretched. The river Rhone was miles off but according to our map, four centuries out of date, another river, much smaller, the Vistre, was less than a mile and a half away to the North. Linda told them all to spread out and search for a stream, fruit, anything interesting. They departed like children but not until I had laid down my unpopular rule, the only thing I was going to be firm about.

  "You carry arms." I ordered coldly, watching their apprehensive faces. "We don't know what the hell happened but it killed a whole planet."

  "They had guns." Elizabeth pointed out angrily.

  "Then they should have used them. We don't know what the hell is in that forest. Only nine of us left, remember?"

  They didn't want to, but I doled out the rifles, gave them a refresher course on how they worked, made sure they had full magazines and knew which was the safety catch. The hostile silence I ignored until they drifted off in pairs carrying packs of ammunition plus basic supplies that Linda had told them to stuff in. Looking sullen, they receded into the distance, Jules and Marie forgetting guns in their eagerness to fondle untouched forest. Linda stayed as I sealed the lander, not wishing hungry insect life to fly in and start chewing the electronics.

  "Damned stupid." I growled at her, hefting my rifle over my shoulder. "There could be giant bloody warthogs in there."

  She smiled but didn't answer as we threaded our way through sweet smelling shrubs and wispy grasses, heading for the forest edge. I know it sounds foolish, we all swan off in different directions, not worrying about King Kong or wolf packs or whatever, but this was home, this was the Earth, this was no alien planet, this was France and we knew that nothing big was

  left alive. We had to see, to explore, it was in our blood.

  The forest edge loomed over us but such was the height of the tree growth that inside the sunlight dimmed and coolness took its place. Detritus, the fallen, decaying parts of trees, littered the ground where tufts of greenery struggled upwards towards the sun. Following my compass course, we walked steadily in the silence, the rustling of leaves cut off by the surrounding woods. Not being a tree fanatic, I had difficulty in identifying tree types, but the characteristic leaves of oaks and beeches were familiar and the smell, that ephemeral scent of Earth woodlands, wafted into our nostrils.

  "David." Linda stopped and peered up at the close meshed canopy of a huge oak. "How long does it take for an oak tree to grow?"

  "How should I know?" I complained. "Down here, southern France, lots of sun, they could shoot up in no time."

  She smiled. "No time meaning four hundred years?"

  A thin rustling, scratching sound made us whirl round to find a smal
l creature studying us with yellow eyes from a branch ten feet off. "It's a cat." I muttered, astonished.

  The feline eyes and striped fur brought back memories. "Pussy, pussy?" Linda whispered, advancing slowly. The cat's mouth opened to reveal a row of sharp teeth and a hissing proclaimed it was not impressed. Its tail swished from side to side and without warning it jumped off the branch, disappearing in the undergrowth.

  We looked at each other. We were not alone. Where there were cats there would be other things. "Trust a cat." Linda said. "They survive anything."

  Alerted by this unexpected meeting, we looked for more life and found it. Beetles scuttled industriously across the forest floor, ants moved purposefully and finally, beautifully, we saw a bird. The wings flashed as it sped through the low growth, darting from side to side.

  "It's a swift or a sand martin." Linda told me, puzzled.

  "How?" I began before she interrupted.

  "Some of them make their nests in holes in cliffs. African ones, I think."

  I nodded. Any bird that had overhead cover might survive radiation which must surely have been the cause of all this. Any creature, in fact. Bats? Most of the insect world seemed undiminished, spiders, some alarmingly large, had webs spread. An unmistakable mouse like animal shot away from under our feet almost. Gnats made singing noises. Something we couldn't see made loud growling noises as we passed by.

  "It would only take two of each and they would spread like, like...fire." Linda explained. "In four centuries there must have been a balance established and nothing here has ever seen man."

  Our not too strenuous exploration brought us to the river, an insignificant stream almost swallowed by overhanging trees. Poring over the map, I pointed upstream. "Up there, maybe half a mile, there was a motorway bridge."

  She looked at me sadly. "Do we want to?"

  But I did, so we followed the river bank with some difficulty as the forest was stiflingly thick here. Presently, the ground rose steeply in front of us, the trees becoming sparser and thinner. We scrambled up and stood on the top where pines seemed to have taken a liking to the ground because they were so close together you couldn't see twenty feet. There was no point in getting sweaty and dirt stained by trying to pass through that lot, so we just stood and listened to the silence. Linda fished out her data pack, the combination of several data recorders and instrument readers.

  "This is several metres higher than it was." She said, peering at the small screen.

  I raised an eyebrow. "You've got that much accuracy tuned in?" I enquired skeptically.

  "I put the whole survey data base in here. We know the exact height of every spot-on Earth to the nearest inch. The satellites." She said loftily.

  "Several metres, eh?" I pondered. Four centuries of leaf mould and wind gathered debris. We'd climbed a respectable hill to get here and I supposed that if nothing interfered the whole damned landscape would get taller and taller. But under our feet, I wondered if there wasn't the skeleton of some well-loved car, complete with its owner, buried forever and returned to the Earth from whence they came.

  "The general land contours are unchanged, but this growth," she waved a hand at the dense forest. "I wonder if the rainfall isn't higher." She wrinkled her brow before breaking into a smile. "Look, David, an orange tree! And over there, look! Lemons!"

  Indeed, the fruit glowed with well-remembered colours and nothing would satisfy her, but we gather some. Burying her nose in an orange, an act which I copied promptly, she smiled at me, her cheeks glistening with juice. She felt better, I could tell, and truth be told, so did I. Fruit and cats, birds and bees, we were home.

  "We can do it." She said. "We can start again."

  She felt warm and loving, her breasts pushing against me, her glorious chestnut mane falling down her back as we kissed. I could feel her slender fingers on my back as we clung to each other in an empty forest. Soon, I felt the tears and held her tighter.

  "They didn't deserve it, not everyone, the children...oh God."

  Nothing I could say would take away the memories she could see in her head. We stood hugging each other as the full enormity began to sink in. "Let's go back." I said at last. "Go back to the others."

  She couldn't speak but nodded as we began our scramble down the bank we had just climbed, finding our way into the deep forest where dappled shade gave strange gloomy shadows to the trees. Our progress, the swish of footsteps seemed the only noise until I stopped suddenly.

  "What the hell is that?" I craned my neck stupidly because the leaf cover was almost total. A high-pitched whistling scream rising to a screech grew closer and closer. Linda grabbed my arm as we stared at the impenetrable canopy. Thunderous echoing reports, loud reverberations seemed to shake the ground. An instant later a furious detonation, a compressed roar of sound washed over us, even the trees suddenly swaying.

  "My God." Linda cried. "That's a missile!"

  We stared, confounded and appalled. No missile was possible, no one was here to fire one, but a terrible thought flashed into my skull. "The lander!" I yelled. "The bastards have fired a drone at it!"

  "No!" Linda panted as we broke into a clumsy jog. "They wouldn't!"

  The ship had a supply of remote, pilotless drones, useful in exploring alien planets. They could and did come and go through an atmosphere and they could be directed to the nearest inch. Fly one down under remote control, point it at the right spot and you had two tons of missile going at the speed of sound. It had never occurred to me that Max and his martinet companions would stoop to cold blooded murder or I would have jettisoned the things. "I hope they were well away." I muttered, breathing hard. Linda's white face told me she echoed my feelings. The lander still had nearly half fuel and the fireball would be fierce.

  We had over a mile to go over steeply rising ground before the land fell away to the landing site. It took us long minutes of sweat stained effort before we saw, through breaks in the tree line, the billowing black smoke and red fingers of fire twisting and turning. Bursting out of the dense forest we came a halt and stared at the wreck of the lander which was burning fiercely, fragments of wings and upper body frames showing through the fire. The ground around was smoking with innumerable small blazes, bushes and grasses blasted away and smouldering. Our peaceful glade was a scene from hell.

  At the far edge of the long clearing two figures waved and ran towards us, Jules and Marie, their faces aged and white. Behind them Bradley Smith's black face was etched with lines as he held up Hilary. "Elizabeth!" He panted as we all met in a shaken group. "She went back!"

  A shout from the distance brought Mike and Mary running to join us, their expressions a mirror of the horror and dread we all felt. "Elizabeth!" Mary cried, clutching Linda's arm.

  "We know." I said and piled all my pack and rifle on the ground. "Mike?" I waved at him and walked steadily towards the lander remains.

  "Wait!" Linda screamed. "It could go up!"

  "The fuel tank's gone already." I said over my shoulder as Mike came up alongside.

  "Bastards." He said succinctly. He was a technician and he'd used the drones when we were first looking down on Alpha Centauri. He'd worked it out. "But why?"

  I shook my head and shielded my face as we edged closer. The fire was strong but the worst was done. The engines were a molten mass, the complex assembly that had flown us down here was a dirty, unrecognisable jumble of metal fragments, only the outer wings being intact. Lying close to where the nose had been was a bundle that smouldered, a bundle that had been Elizabeth. Mike turned away and vomited as I skirted the heat and stood looking down.

  We buried her. We used the combat knives from our survival kits and it took a long time to dig the grave. The fire died down, but it burnt all that day and halfway into the night, the column of thick, oily, filthy smoke smearing the sky to announce that man was back and up to his old tricks. We all stood around the mound of earth, but no one could think of anything reasonable to say except good-bye to Elizabeth,
a woman who had smiled at me and laughed at my jokes.

  We made a camp near a small stream that Jules had found at the forest's edge where it meandered on its way to the Rhone, Jules said, following the descending grain of the country. The euphoria of breathing the living earth smells and wondering at the flowers had vanished. Seven dirty, strained faces looked at me over the flickering flames of the fire we had lit. It was time to take stock.

  "Well, now we know." I said heavily into the silence. "He wants us dead."

  "What do we do, fella?" Bradley's low growl said he would dearly like to repay the compliment.

  "What can we do?" Mary seemed struck by fear, her hands shaking. "We've lost all our stores, there's no way back."

  "Yeah." I muttered. "I didn't think they'd do anything like this. But they know something, all of them." The silence that greeted this assertion was disbelieving. "They put on a little act for us, Max and Selena."

  "But what can they know?" Mike stared at me. "You think they knew this was what we were going to find?" He waved a hand at the dark forest. All of them were staring at me as if I had lost some marbles. "You think they were going to condemn themselves to death like the rest of us? It's crazy, David." He hesitated. "But they might want to work out some feelings of revenge on people who buggered up their big ideas of survival, what about that? After all, who's going to court martial them now?"

  I could see what was in their heads. We had brought this on ourselves by being nasty to the junta, that was what they thought. Maybe. The silence lengthened as deep depression began to show on their faces, a black hole of despair that would swallow us all if we didn't snap out of it. "OK, first things first." I said briskly, clapping my hands sharply, making them start. "What did you all find? Linda and me found orange and lemon trees, we saw a cat and loads of insects and a bird."

  "A bird?" Mike sat up, looking relieved. "That's good news, damned good."