Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 58: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

114 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION ship for several days now, and I still can’t see how the technology was developed that allowed the manufacture of some of their instruments. We should have noticed something wrong a long time ago. “The priests use sextants, watches, compasses. And, just to make it worse, we have one video recording of a priest laying out a course on an accurate chart. He was using a protractor, which was divided into Galactic degrees. That was the clincher. Somebody’s out of place, and we’ve got to find him— or them.” He took the sword from Banasel. “I think we’d better go on to the eastern continent, see what we can find, then we can deal with our friends. But first, Ban, you'd better run out a call for one of the Sector Guardsmen to back us up if necessary. We could run into something too hot for us to handle.” Banasel nodded and turned to the communicator. Lanko dropped into the pilot seat, glanced at the screens, and moved controls. In the viewscreen, the sea tilted, drew farther away, then became a level, featureless blue expanse. “Well, here’s your eastern continent. In fact, this is the city of Kneuros. It’s where you wanted to go, isn’t it?”’ ~ Musa looked at Banasel thoughtfully. “Yes,” he admitted. “It’s where I thought I wanted to go, but now I really know what I wanted in the first place.” “Oh?” “Certainly. I was restless. I thought I liked being a trader in Karth, and I was a fairly good trader, too. But I was just getting things at secondhand. I turned down just what I really wanted, because it scared me. That was a long time ago.”” He looked at the control panel. He’d understood such panels once, some years ago. ‘How do you plan to find your aliens—if there are any?” “Search pattern.” Lanko shrugged. “We'll cruise around in a grid pattern until we pick up some sort of reading, or until we spot something abnormal.” He pointed at a series of instruments. ‘““They’re bound to have a ship somewhere, and we'll pick up a small amount of power radiation from their screens. If their ship were orbiting in space, we’d have picked it up long ago, so we must assume it’s grounded. I think we’d better go right into a pattern. We can use Kneuros as origin.” He stared at the plotting instruments. fn _“Let’s see. If I wanted to hide a ship, I’d use the most inaccessible location I could find. We do that ourselves, in fact. And there are some mountainous regions inland.” He set up course and speed. | “Yeah,” Banasel added, “and I’d worry a lot more about ground approach than air accessibility, at least on this planet.” The ship gained altitude, accelerated, and sped eastward. | Day by day, the course trace built. up, the cameras recorded the terrain under the ship, and the two guardsmen built up their mosaic. The ship crossed and re-crossed the continent, mapping as it went. From time to time, Lanko made careful comparison of the new mosaic with an earlier survey, noting differences. There were new settlements. Where members of a nomadic culture had roamed the prairie, an industrial civilization was rapidly growing. | THE PLAYERS 115 Lanko tapped on the map. ““Two cultures,” he observed. “Two cultures, separated by mountains and desert. Absolutely no evidence of contact, but considerable similarity between them. This pattern begins to look familiar.” He picked a tape from the shelves, ran it through a viewer, then reversed it, and picked out various portions for recheck. Finally, he made a super- position of some of their observation tape, examined it, and turned. Banasel held up a hand. “Don’t tell us,’ he growled. “I studied about drones, too.” “Drones?” Musa looked at him, then glanced back at the viewer. “Yes. Characters from one of the advanced cultures, who feel frustrated, and fail to fit in. They often turn into pleasure seekers, and frequently end up by monkeying with primitive cultures, to prove their ability to themselves, at least.” ‘Things like this happen often?” : “Oh, not too often, I suppose, but often enough so that people like us are stationed on every known primitive planet, to prevent activity of the type. You see, the drones usually start out simply, by setting up minor interference in business or government on some primitive planet. Usually, they’re caught pretty quickly. But sometimes they evade capture. And they can end up by exerting serious influence in cultural pattern. Some planets have been set back, and even destroyed as a result of drone activity. Although their motives are different, drones’re just as bad and just as dangerous as any other criminal.” Lanko grinned a little. “Only difference is, they’re usually easier to combat than organized criminal groups with a real purpose. Generally, they’re irresponsible youngsters who don’t have the weapons, organization, or ability that the real criminals come up with.’’ He shrugged. “Of course,” he added, “‘we’ve called for help just in case, But we'll probably be able to take care of this situation by ourselves. ln fact, unless there are unusual features, we'd beiter, if we don’t want to be regarded as somewhat ineffectual.”” He paused, glanced toward the detector set, and tapped on the map again, then slowly traced out an area. “We should be picking up something pretty soon,” he said, thoughtfully. “Better set up a pattern around here, in the mountain ranges, Banasel. We can worry about settled areas later.” : A. needle flickered, rose from zero, then steadied. Somewhere, back of the instrument panel, a tiny current actuated a micro relay, and an alarm drop fell. As the warning buzz sounded, both Lanko and Banasel looked over at the detector panel. “Well, it’s about time.’ Lanko leaned to his right, setting switches. A screen lit up, showing a faint, red dot, He touched the controls, bringing the dot to center screen, then checked the meters. ““Not too far,” he remarked. “A little out of normal range, though. He must have all his screen power on.” Banasel turned back to the workb ac a) o wil Cat 300; KS daye's mn for a moment, then opened one.