Fifty Days to Doom by E. C. Tubb

Author:E. C. Tubb [Tubb, E. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780575107366
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2014-01-30T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Delila

The ship had gone. The strange, alien vessel with its crew of Ginzoes and the solitary body of a dead Terran.

It had whooshed up into space and disappeared into a clear blue sky bearing with it the terrible secret that threatened half the galaxy with extinction. It had left with a flare of rockets and a surging tumult of displaced air, and Ranson had been glad to see it go.

He stood, the space suit a crumpled mass at his feet, and breathed gratefully at the clean, fragrant air of a strange oxygen planet. Before him stretched the rolling green sward of fertile land. Behind him a river gurgled as it raced towards an unknown sea, and small trees and flowering shrubs dotted the bright green of the rolling plain.

On that plain rested what seemed to be an engineer’s nightmare.

A ship reared its scarred nose towards the clear blue of the sky. Around it, thrown in careless confusion, were heaped bales and boxes, coils of wire and glistening components, the sagging ruin of a dozen hyper-drive units and racks of tools and equipment. It was the gathered ruin of a dozen gutted vessels and it rested beneath the blue of the sky like a spilt box of mechanical toys.

“There’s our ship,” said Ranson grimly. “All we have to do is to repair it, find out just where we are, get to Earth, contact Lasser, make him declare peace; and: make sure that the Ginzoes understand. All within fifty days. Can we do it, Handley?”

“It depends on the state of the ship.” The engineer grunted as his experienced eyes scanned the scarred vessel. “Look at it! That type hasn’t been seen in the space lanes for over fifty years now. The design was obsolete before I was born., They must have found it in a museum.”

“They seem to have given us plenty of spares and equipment.” Ranson kicked at the grass as they walked; towards the jumble of boxes. “They must have used this planet as a dumping ground.”

“Let’s hope that we can use some of it,” said Handley grimly. “If they took it all from ships blasted by their vortex guns it will be useless. Look at those hyper-drive units! You can see that they are just so much scrap metal from here. If the rest of the ship is like that—” He shrugged and Ranson knew just what the big man meant. Once a vessel had been caught in the fire of a Ginzo vortex gun everything electrical on it was wrecked, and, if they had nothing better to work with, Mankind was as good as dead.

Tensely they began to examine the heaped supplies.

“It could be worse,” grunted Handley, after a while. “The tools are good, some of the components and there is quite a stack of thermocans. We won’t go hungry for a while, at any rate.” He straightened his back and squinted his eyes at the setting sun. “I wonder what planet this is? I’d have thought that there would have been settlers here, the climate seems perfect.

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