Dangerous Planet
CHAPTER 3
Simon, who could not stand the smell and sight of blood, vomited right on the captain's torn off leg. There left two more officers alive and the hunter decided to play with them. At first, he threw them up to the ceiling, and then dropped down to the floor with powerful blows. Neil, who thought he was going to go crazy amidst these pools of blood and pieces of bloody flesh, grabbed Simon by the sleeve of his jacket and tried to get him out of this hell. But Simon could not restrain himself on the slippery bloody floor and fell among the pieces of meat that only a minute ago were members of the crew.
"Boss, it's not time to lie down," Neil shouted, grabbing his leg. He did not even pay attention to Stan, because he was sure that the hunter would not touch him. "Can you not see that this creature has gone mad?" Neil added cursing and swearing. Simon grumbled something in return and vomited again. "Neil, wait for me!" Stan shouted, who was sitting near the wall and keeping his eyes on the hunter. He, by that time released from the body all three eyes and, adding to the other four limbs, three more, briskly ran around the control panel. "Umm first we get out your monster," Neil said and held out his hand to open the door. And at this moment the hunter struck a blow ... Neil, like a feather, was thrown into the air and flung with the invisible force to the control panel. "Stan, help me!" he roared, sliding on the floor and snatching the weapon. The first shot turned into a glass puddle overview screen, and the second one – the remains of the captain into the smoking mess. The control cabin at once filled with the smell of scorched hair, burnt meat, and evaporated blood, but surprisingly, it helped Simon came to his senses, and with difficulty on all fours, he also snatched his weapon and began to shoot down the hunter, who cleverly avoided the shots and kept generated the telepathic blows. "Do not kill him!" Stan shouted, trying to stop Simon from shooting. What happened in the next minutes, he didn't know. Everything mixed up in his head, and Stan did not understand anything at all. If only the hunter calmed down after he killed the crew Stan would understand it but after he attacked Neil, Stan realized that the behavior of the hunter is unpredictable and goes beyond understanding. Previously, he didn't act like that. "You do not see that he rebelled," Simon said, trying to aim at the hunter. But the hunter easily escaped from the shot, and the beam of the weapon cut down the left wing of the control panel. A thin alarm signal sounded in the control cabin, and the ship's hull trembled for a second. The surviving displays lost energy supply and after a second attempt to recover, switched off. Bright before that, the lighting quickly began to darken, and soon the control cabin was lit only by the lights burning on the surviving part of the control panel. "Boss, we are in trouble," Neil said quietly, without risking getting out from under the table, which served him as a rather unreliable shelter, "the crew was destroyed by the hunter, the control panel damaged, and we will never be able to fix it ourselves," he said quickly, and before Simon could answer him, he fired again. The hunter, as before, dodged the beam, and the central part of the control panel flew into the air, showering them all with molten drops, into which the electronic stuffing of the control panel had turned. This time the spaceship sharply shook, and came out into the usual space, just half a kilometer from the surface of an unknown planet. For some time, the engines which still were in order held it in the orbit of the exit from the subspace, but then they shot down, and the spaceship quickly began to lose altitude. "Oh God," Neil whispered, watching with wide opened eyes how the surface of an unknown planet was approaching and expanding on the right screen. "This is the end," he added hoarsely and with all his strength pressed his feet against the wall, clinging simultaneously to the single leg of the chair, screwed to the floor. "Simon, try to do something." You're a pilot!" Stan shouted, who, not paying attention to the proximity of the blow, was searching with his hands over the blood-drenched floor, hoping to find the control unit of the hunter. "What do you want me to do?" Simon nevertheless managed to force himself to crawl to the right side of the control panel and grabbed it with his hands. "He's all smashed!" he said irritably. Stan did not answer him and what could he say? Not wanting to see what would happen next, he closed his eyes and prepared for a terrible blow, which must inevitably follow. The hull of a spaceship made in the wild jungle a curvy farrow about two hundred kilometers long, then crashed and cracked. The control cabin fell far away from the place where the fragments of the cargo hold landed. Several times, heavily overturned, the control cabin rolled down into a shallow ravine, burying the bodies of people under it. And the last thing Stan remembered in this chaos, which never seemed to end, was how something heavy fell on his back, pushing him face-down into a piece of bloody human flesh. The hunter was the luckiest one in the time of the crash. Hiding two eyes under the thick skin and leaving only one on his back, he burned a hole in the wall and disappeared. Probably he decided that there is nothing more to do for him on the ship where there is so much useless meat. Moving the fingers of his right hand, Stan grabbed convulsively something soft and, without opening his eyes, tried to figure out what it was. Why he did it, he did not know himself. But he still could not determine, and he slowly opened his eyes. Directly in front of his nose, he saw the floor all covered with blood stains and a crack that began at his face and stretched somewhere out of the way. Through the crack broke into the daylight, and one could see the gray stones and something green, which could well pass for the grass. For some time Stan stared at it stupidly, then moved his legs and, making sure that they obeyed him, tried to get up. After some effort, he succeeded, and he sat down, his back against the cold wall. The terrible noise was inside his head and it was hard for Stan to focus on what he saw before him. But, in the end, he managed to do it, and he realized that he was looking at Neil's leg, from which the boot slipped off. Apparently, it was his leg which he squeezed all this time. Shaking his head, Stan stood on all fours and slowly crawled to Neil. He was dead. This Stan identified at a first glance. Something heavy during the crash broke Neil's skull, and it was done in such a way that instead of a face, a bloody hole gaped. If not his blond hair, Stan would hardly have recognized that it was he but not Simon or someday else. The thought about the boss made him leave Neil, whom he could not help at all. On his fours he kept crawling around. After all that happened, Stan did not react to the puddles of blood and pieces of flash that were scattered in various places. When he with difficulty pulled out the smashed body of Simon, he was not at all surprised and frightened to see the mortal wound in his stomach, from which the entrails fell out and lay around the wheezing and blood-staining Simon. Yes, he was alive but not for a long time. For a moment Stan stared blankly at his holed stomach, then crawled away and found the captain's weapon. One shot in Simon's head stopped his anguish, and Stan was left alone. Still not realizing this and what happened to them all, he crawled with a weapon in his hand to the broken door and in two minutes he got out from under the wreckage. Staggering, he rose to his trembling knees, looking around. Part of the spaceship in which the control cabin was located laid now in the gorge and represented a miserable sight. But Stan did not care. Still thinking hard, he climbed onto the hull and lay on his back, arms outstretched. The bright sun had already sunk more than half its way through the cloudless sky, and Stan, after some time, came to the conclusion that a whole night had passed since the accident, and all this time he was unconscious. This thought did not cause him any feelings, and he slowly stroked the sun-heated metal. In such a trance, he lay for more than an hour, but when the back began to ache from immobility, he rolled over on his stomach and looked along the uneven canyon, where all over around were scattered fragments of the spaceship, broken appliances, things and ... a few fixed human bodies . Seeing them, Stan wanted to hail, but then thought that if they lay here all night, then it's useless to do it. They are probably all dead. "Hell," he cursed, not knowing whom he meant. "But if I'm alive, then maybe there's still someone else," he thought, slowly getting to his feet. Having looked around once more, Stan raised his head up and saw on the edge of the gorge some trees with a pinkish bark, with green branches and green leaves. The branches were barely noticeable moving, and the leaves were thick, as if there was air inside them. But whether it was in fact, Stan did not take it. In the first place, it did not interest him now, and secondly, he still felt bad. * * *
With a weapon in his hand, he cautiously descended from the control cabin and walked a little to the side of the human bodies that were visible. Then he changed his mind and, wincing with pain all over his body, went back and headed to the place where the spaceship fell from. It is more accurate to say where the rest of its parts were supposed to be, fallen off at different times during the crash. Having overcome on a rough bottom of a gorge of meters fifty, Stan has stumbled on one more corpse of the man. This man, as far as he remembered, sat near them during the flight. Now he was dead, lying on his back with a broken leg and a face that was distorted with horror. Stan silently walked over to that detection and in sixty meters came across the first large, after the control cabin, wreckage of the spaceship. With an incomprehensible feeling, he quickly ran as far as possible in his condition to the battered part of the hull and to his great joy heard someone moaning, sometimes interrupted by a hoarse and indistinct muttering. The groan emanated from the inside, and Stan with the weapon in his hand carefully crept into the wreckage and in the semi-darkness he wandered to the sound. Ten steps later he stopped at a tilted metal door and listened. There was no sound heard, but then a muffled notice came to his ears through the closed door. There was definitely someone behind the door. Pushing the weapon into his belt, Stan grabbed hold of the handle that had come loose in one place and pulled it toward him. But the door did not succumb and did not move a millimeter. Then Stan pushed it by his shoulder with all his might, but from the jerk in his head such a charge of pain exploded that he groaned and bent in half. When the pain subsided, Stan stood up and put his ear to the cold metal with scraps of plastic sheathing. It was quiet there. Imagining that the man behind the door died of wounds, and he himself was left alone on the whole planet, Stan hit his foot several times at the door, and then shouted hoarsely: "Hey, is anybody alive there!?" The answer was silence. For a few seconds Stan looked at the door, then with a feverish motion he grabbed the weapon and fired several times in a row, aiming at the door handle. Having knocked paint off in several places, the bullets ricocheted and entered the ceiling lining with a howl. Realizing that in such a way he didn't open the door, Stan hid the weapon and headed for the exit. The only thing that could help him open the door is a blaster. And in the control cabin, Stan remembered well, there should be as many as three blasters: Simon's, Neil's and his. The main thing was to get it in time and not be late. Spent in the control cabin for about ten minutes, Stan again stopped at the closed door, and picked up the blaster. Then he changed his mind, went to the safest possible distance and again took aim. Two shots burned in the place where the door handle was a hole a half-meter in size and, waiting for the smoke to dissipate, and the white-hot metal to cool, Stan went inside. In the surrounding semi-darkness, he did not see anything at first. Only after a few seconds his eyes had become a little used and among the scattered things Stan saw someone's hand, half of the face and one foot. All the rest was covered with cans and boxes. It was a woman. Without thinking twice, Stan quickly but carefully got out her motionless body, then picked her up and carried out of the wreckage to fresh air. He gently put the woman on the ground, sat down next to her and threw back blond hair. With an exclamation of surprise, Stan saw that this was the same Shirra, with whom he argued a little at the beginning of the flight. At first this news upset him, but then Stan decided that better it be she than nobody. He did not yet know what kind of planet it was, and whether there were any earth colonies here. But, in any case, he did not want to be completely alone. When his astonishment passed a little, Stan began to examine her carefully, wishing to find out what was her conditioning and how much she was injured during the spaceship crash. There was almost no blood on her body, and Stan decided that Shirra might have broken something. Soon his assumption was confirmed: the foot of her right leg was unnaturally turned and was swollen. Carefully taking off her shoes, Stan examined her toes with his fingers and came to the conclusion that there was no fracture, but the most common dislocation occurred. This pleased him, and after a little hesitation he returned her foot to its original place. Shirra screamed in sharp pain, jerked and tried to break free. But Stan leaned against her and held her. "It's all right," he breathed heavily. Shirra opened her eyes for a second, muttered something inaudible, and again closed them. "It's all right," Stan repeated and began to apply a tight bandage that reliably fixed the foot in the right position. Having straightened this, he examined her hands and saw that the three fingers of her right hand also needed his help. The index and middle finger were broken and turned blue, and the little finger was broken. After examining all three fingers carefully, Stan fixed two of them, and then took up her little finger. The fracture was closed, and the bone did not even move. This made things much easier, and Stan, picking up two pieces of suitable plastic, put the little finger between the pieces of plastic and tied it up. After making sure that there were no more external injuries, he carefully lifted her in his arms and hesitantly stopped, figuring out where to put her. In the end, he came to the conclusion that there was no better place than the compartment of the spaceship in which he found her. He carefully carried Sirra to the cabin with the scorched door. Having constructed from some boxes a kind of a bed, Stan moved Shirra there and tiredly dropped down beside her. He wanted to drink, and food, too. Stan didn't eat or drink during the past 24 hours. So, he got on his fours and began to rummage in scattered boxes. Soon his search was crowned with success, and he, with the help of several ingredients, made a few sandwiches. Having eaten them with great appetite, Stan grinned in a satisfied smile and found a jar of solid sizes. Having knocked down the lid, he put his nose inside and in a second he gave a satisfactory grunt. Then he grabbed the jar with both hands, picked it up and greedily began to drink. When his stomach filled with a tonic drink and seemed to hang down somewhere, Stan lowered the jar to the floor and tiredly threw back his head. Drops of tonic flowed in small streams and flowed to his chin and neck, but he did not pay attention to it. Despite the fact that Stan by some miracle survived after the disaster and even provided the first medical aid to Shirra, he, nevertheless, acted as if in a sleep, and seemed to look at himself from the outside. The fact that all this seemed to him unreal was understandable. It did not fit in Stan's head that Neil and Simon were dead, and they would never again land on some planet like they used to, and they would not explore it any more like they did. For some reason this thought haunted him. About the crashed spaceship, the crew killed by the hunter and the dead passengers, he did not care at all, and he did not even think about them. The truth is, he helped Shirra, but only because he met her on his way. If someone else was in her place, Stan would help it, too. But he could not think about the fate of everyone who was on board the spaceship.
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