The Sinners of Erspia

“Klystar went away a long time ego. There's no one to report to. Hand back control of the station to me."

This time there was no chattering of words being burned onto parchment, and no change in the dial readings. “It's no good,” Laedo muttered.

Histrina clenched her fists in frustration. “Think of something else, ” she insisted bitingly.

“I'll have to see if I can get the casing off and jigger about with the cybernetics somehow. The trouble is, putting it out of action might disconnect the drive unit controls as well. We'd be stranded."

“Look!” said Histrina.

Over the control panel a part of wall had changed colour from grey to smudgy white, forming a wide oval patch. The oval cleared and became glasslike. It was a viewscreen.

In it, Laedo saw what he presumed lay ahead of them: black space dotted with stars. Then, to the accompaniment of more movement under their feet, the view swivelled round.

Suddenly they were looking at a planet, shining in the darkness, lit on one side by an unseen sun.

“It's Erspia!" Histrina cried. “We're back at Erspia!"

“No, we couldn't be.” Laedo inspected the dials with a frown. “We haven't gone back, not unless these readings are all wrong. We're thousands of miles away."

For all that, it did look a lot like Erspia. Now he spotted where the planet's daytime illumination came from: a point source of light, orbiting the globe not far away. It was the Erspia system in duplicate, and automatically he began to see it not as a planet proper but as a spherically shaped planetoid, even though the screen gave no ranging figures from which to estimate size.

“Erspia looks brownish-green from space,” he said to Histrina. “Look close at that planet. It's mottled in different colours."

“I don't see."

Laedo wasn't sure if he saw the colours either now. Perhaps it had been an optical effect, a sort of shading of phantom hues. But the globe was definitely lighter in tone than Erspia. It was almost pastel.

“It's obvious Klystar made more than one world,” he said tonelessly. “We'll wait till the station parks itself in orbit or whatever. Then I'll have a go at the casing."

But the station didn't go into orbit. Laedo gave a hiss of indrawn breath as the planetoid's globe shape swooped nearer.

They were going in—fast!

“Look out!” he yelled to the hidden controller. “There's a planet ahead! We're going to crash!"

“What's happening?” Histrina shrieked.

“We're out of control. Quick—get into this chair.” He pointed to the padded, braced seat next to his. It wasn't much protection, but it was better than standing.

Histrina disregarded his advice. “I'll fix that thing,” she snarled. She pulled the gun from her waistband and pointed it at the control board as the worldlet swelled and swelled on the screen, blotting out the ebony margin that had surrounded it.

“No!” Laedo jumped up and began wrestling with her, forcing the nozzle of the gun away from the control board. “That won't help! Stop it!"

Again he felt the floor shift beneath his feet, then a slight pressure. He knew that these indications were leaks through the artificial gravity from much more powerful acceleration forces that would have crushed them both instantly. Either the station was changing course, or it was decelerating.

“It's all right!” he shouted. “Put the gun away, Histrina!"

Dubiously she obeyed. The sunlit side of the planetoid was now so close that blurry surface features could be made out—fuzzy mottled colours, lavender, light green, daffodil yellow, swaying and sliding past. Then, abruptly, it all streaked aside and they were once more looking into space, with the point-source sun glaring out at them.

The station had turned itself over. It was coming down for a landing, right side up.

Laedo seated himself back at the control board. Experimentally he worked a set of slides whose use he had been unable to discover before. As he now guessed, they controlled the viewscreen. In moments he learned how to direct the scope downwards, so that he was able once more to survey the surface.

This definitely was not Erspia. The projector station was descending gently, with a lateral drift so that it appeared to skim over a landscape now clearly visible in all its features. It was a world of flamboyant jungle—though not a jungle of trees, but instead of what appeared to be gigantic blooms or orchids, riotous with colour. At first Laedo thought he had got the focus wrong and was scanning a tropical garden from an apparent height of a foot or two, but no, the viewpoint was their true one, hundreds or thousands of feet in the air. Interspersing the growths were clear patches carpeted with pale green grass or moss, and here and there, azure lakes.

He felt Histrina lean over him. “Isn't it lovely?” she murmured. Her arm hung limply, the gun still clasped in her fingers.

Laedo wondered if the projector station could survive a planetary landing in Earth-normal gravity.