"IT IS TIME, I believe,” Mura had come up on the
lookout point, “to follow the tactics of our fellow fighters,
these ‘bogies’. How is your throwing arm, Thorson?” He stooped and searched the ground, rising a few moments
later grasping a round stone about as big as his fist.
Taking aim he pitched it at an angle into the valley and they
saw and heard it strike against a rock there. Dane saw the reason
for such an attack upon the crawler. Blaster fire was no respecter
of persons. In an exchange of such potent forces Rip might well be
killed or maimed. But rocks expertly thrown from above would not
only knock out the outlaws but would suggest an attack by native
Limbians and not betray the identity of the attackers.
Kosti circled around the foot of the cliff and took cover below
the perch favoured by Mura, while Dane skimmed across the valley
and climbed above eye level to a narrow ledge on which he might
crouch with a pile of hastily collected ammunition.
They were not given long for such preparations, the clinking
passage of the crawler echoed ahead as a warning and the three
Traders took to cover as the vehicle crept into sight across the
uneven terrain. It crashed through bushes until the driver slowed
to a halt. His helmet com-unit must have been on, for, while his
natural voice could only have been an undistinguishable murmur to
those in hiding, his words were loud in their ears.
“There’s Snall’s wagon—piled up!
What’s been—”
One of Rip’s guards scrambled off the crawler as if to go
forward and investigate. And in that moment Mura’s arm
signalled Dane to attack.
A stone thudded against the helmet of the would-be investigator,
sending him off balance to clutch at the tread of the crawler for
support. Dane slammed another in his direction and then aimed for
the driver of the machine.
They were yelling now and Rip had come to life. Though his arms
were tied behind him, he threw himself at the man to his left, his
effort carrying them both to the ground beyond. The driver turned
on the power of the crawler so that it ground ahead through the
rain of stones the three Traders hurled at it.
One of the outlaws had pulled himself aboard again and now the
other wriggled from under Rip’s body. He had his blaster in
hand and he bent over Shannon with an evil grin. Then his face was
smashed into a red pulp. He screamed horribly and reeled back. The
one who had managed to climb aboard looked back in time to witness
his fall.
“Kraner—those little beasts got Kraner! No,
don’t wait to collect that Trader! If you do they’ll
get us!”
The crawler kept on towards the mountains. For some reason the
two on board it had not used their blasters to rake the bushes. The
very unexpectedness of the attack and the loss of one of their
company left them only with the thought of escape.
They rounded the length of the stranded crawler and were out of
sight before Kosti crept out of hiding and went down to Rip, where
Dane joined him seconds later.
Shannon lay on his side, his arms bound at a painful angle
behind him, his face showing a closed eye surrounded with a dark
bruise, a cut lip, raw and bloody.
“You have been to the wars,” Kosti grunted
as he knelt to saw at the cords with his bush knife.
Rip’s words were mumbled as he tried to move his torn
mouth. “They jumped me—I was almost to the Queen when
they jumped me. They’ve the ship pinned here—some sort
of ray which crashes any ship within a certain distance of the
planet—”
Dane slipped an arm under Rip’s shoulders and helped him
to sit up. The other gave a grunt and a muffled exclamation as he
moved, one hand going to his side.
“More damages?” Kosti reached out to unseal
Rip’s tunic but Shannon parried the investigating hand.
“Nothing we can fix here and now. Think I’ve cracked
a rib—or maybe two. But, listen, they’ve the
Queen—”
“We know. Picked up a prisoner,” Dane told him.
“He was driving that crawler over there. Told us all about
what’s going on here. Maybe, using him, we can make some sort
of a deal. Can you walk—?”
“Yes, it might be well to withdraw,” Mura stepped
down to where they were. “They had their coms on when we
jumped them. It is uncertain how much of the succeeding events have
been overheard by their fellows.”
Rip could walk, with support. And they got him around to their
own crawler and Wilcox.
“Any sign of Kamil?” Kosti wanted to know.
“They have him all right,” Rip replied. “But I
think that he’s with their main party. They have quite a few
men. And they can keep the Queen here until she rusts away—if
they want to.”
“So Snall here has already informed us,” Wilcox
observed bleakly. “He also says that he does not know where
this mysterious installation is. I’m inclined to doubt
that—”
At that the bound and gagged prisoner wriggled and made muffled
sounds, trying to indicate his sincerity.
“Down that valley is one way in, at least in to their
major supply depot and barracks,” Rip informed them.
“And the installation can’t be too far from
that.”
Dane touched the wriggling Snall with the toe of his boot.
“D’you suppose we could exchange this one for Ali? Or
at least use him to get us into the place?”
Rip answered that. “I doubt it. They’re a pretty
hard lot. Snall’s life or death wouldn’t matter much as
far as they are concerned.”
And the look in those bloodshot eyes above the gag Kosti had
planted, bore out that Snall agreed with that. He had little faith
in assistance from his own companions unless his rescue was
necessary to their preservation.
“Three of us on our feet and able to go, and two
crooks,” Wilcox mused. “How many men have they in the mountains,
Shannon, any idea of that?”
“Maybe a hundred. It seems to be a well organized
outfit,” Rip replied dispiritedly.
“We can sit here until we starve,” Kosti broke the
ensuing silence, “and that won’t get us anywhere, will
it? I’d say take some chances and hope for luck. It
can’t all be bad!”
“Snall could show us the way in—at least into the
part he knows,” Dane said. “And we could scout
around—size up the country and the odds.”
“If we could only contact the Queen!” Wilcox beat
his knee with his fist.
“With the sun up—it is now—there is perhaps a
way,” Mura began.
His way entailed going back to the wrecked crawler in the second
valley and unscrewing a bright metal plate which backed the
driver’s seat. With Dane’s help, the steward got this
to the top of the cliff. And they wedged their prize at an angle
until they caught the sun on its surface and flashed the light
across the mile or so of rugged territory which lay between them
and the ship.
Mura smiled. “This may do it. It should be as good as our
torches in the night if it works. And unless those outlaws down
there have eyes in the back of their skulls, it will not be seen
except from control—”
But once their crude com was in place they had other
preparations to make. Wilcox, Rip, Kosti and the prisoner moved
from the hideout in one valley on into the other. The strange
crawler was righted and found to be undamaged and ready to move.
And while the other four waited Mura and Dane climbed once more to
the heights where they sweated over the plate until they
laboriously flashed twice over their message to the Queen.
Then there was nothing to do but stay to see if their code had
been read. Only if the ship made the proper reply in action could
they move.
And that answer came just as Dane had given up hope. Round ports
blinked like eyes on the sides of the Queen! There was a bark of sound and smoke arose by a hidden pocket of the
besiegers—the one which lay between the ship and the valley.
Their message had been read, those on the ship would keep the enemy
bracketed while the party in the valley made their dash for the
outlaw headquarters on a desperate attempt at surprise.
They were all able to ride on this carrier, the prisoner
sandwiched in between Dane and Mura, Kosti at the controls. It had
what their own crawler had lacked, handholds, and they clung to
these as the thing rattled along.
Dane watched the bushy slopes they passed. He had not forgotten
the bogy attack. It might be true that the creatures were
nocturnal. But on the other hand, once aroused, perhaps the globes
might still be in hiding there, waiting to cut off any small
party.
The valley curved and narrowed. Now under the jolting carrier
the surface was mostly stream-bed and the water crept up to lap at
the edge of the platform. There were signs here, as there had been
in the valley near the ruins, that this way had been in use as a
road—scratches on the rocks, tracks crushed in the
gravel.
Then before them the stream became a small falls, splashing into
a pool and the valley ended in a barrier cliff. Kosti jerked the
gag from Snall’s mouth.
“All right,” he said in the tone of one who was not
going to be put off, “what do we do to get through here,
bright boy?”
Snall licked his puffed lips and glowered back. Bound and gagged
as he had been, helpless as he was, he had regained a large measure
of his confidence.
“Find out for yourself,” he retorted.
Kosti sighed. “I hate to waste time, fella. But if you
must be softened up, you’re going to be—get me?”
Something else got them all first. A stone missed Kosti’s
head by a scant inch as he bent over Snall. And a larger one struck
the captive’s body, bringing a sharp cry of pain out of
him.
“Bogies!” Dane fanned his sleep ray up a wall where
he could see nothing move, but from which he was sure the stones
had been thrown.
Another rock cracked viciously against the crawler as Wilcox hit
the dirt on the other side, pulling Rip with him to shelter half
under the machine. Mura was using his ray, too, standing
unconcerned knee deep in the pool and beaming the cliff foot by
foot as if he had all the time in the world and intended to make
this a thorough job.
It was Snall who ended that strange blind battle. Kosti had
dragged him to safety and must have cut his bonds so that he could
move with greater speed. But now the outlaw flung himself out of
shelter, straight for the controls of the carrier. He brought his
fist down upon a button set in the panel and was rewarded by a high
pitched tinkle—a tinkle which resounded in the Terran’s
heads until Dane had to fight to keep his hands from his ears.
The answer to this assault upon their eardrums was as
preposterous as anything Dane had ever witnessed in a Video
performance. The supposedly solid rock wall fronting the end of the
valley opened, one piece of the stone falling back to provide a
dark gap. And, since their captive was prepared for that he was the
first through the door, darting from under Kosti’s clutching
hands.
With an inarticulate roar the jetman followed Snall. And Dane
pounded after both of them into the maw of the cliff. From the
sunlight of Limbo they were translated to a twilight grey, strung
out like beads on a string, with Snall, proving himself a good
distance runner, well at the head.
Dane was inside the straight corridor before his common sense
took command once more. He shouted to Kosti and his voice echoed in
a hollow boom. Though he slowed, the other two kept on into the
dusky reaches ahead.
Dane turned back to the entrance, still undecided. To be cut off
here—their party divided. What should he do, run after Kosti,
or try to bring in the others? He was in time to see Mura come in
at a walking pace. And then, to Dane’s horror, the outlet to
the world closed! There was a clang of metal meeting metal and the
sunlight was instantly cut to evening.
“The door!” Dane hurled himself at the masked
opening with the same fervour with which he had followed Snall into the
corridor. But before he reached that spot Mura’s steadying
grip closed on his arm, restraining him with a strength he had
forgotten the smaller man possessed.
“Do not be alarmed,” the steward said. “There
is no danger. Wilcox and Shannon are in safety. They are armed with
the sleep rays, in addition they know how to operate the horn to
open the gate when necessary. But where is Karl? Has he
disappeared?”
Mura’s tone had a soothing effect. The little man gave
such an impression of unruffled efficiency that Dane lost that
panic which had sent him running for the entrance.
“The last I saw he was still after Snall.”
“Let us hope that he has caught up with him. I would be
better pleased if we walked these ways with Snall under our
control—not with him somewhere ahead to warn his
companions.”
They hurried on and discovered that the corridor made a sharp
turn to the left. Dane listened, hoping to hear the sounds of
running feet. But when the thump-thump did come it was made by a
single pair of boots. And a minute later the jetman barged into
view his face very sober in the wan light radiated from the smooth
walls about them.
“Where’s Snall?” Dane asked.
Kosti grimaced. “He got through one of those condemned
wall back there—”
“Just where?” Mura went in the direction from which
the jetman had just come.
“The door snapped shut as I got to it,” Kosti
protested. “We can’t follow him. Unless one of you
brought that tootler off the crawler.”
The passage stretched only a short distance beyond, ending in a
wall as blank of any opening as the cliffs without. Though this was
not of stone but of the seamless substances which made the
buildings in the Forerunner ruins.
“This wall?” Mura thumped the surface as Kosti
nodded gloomily.
”Can’t see any opening there now—”
The humming vibration, to which they had become so accustomed
that they no longer consciously noted it, sang through the walls,
through the flooring under their feet. How much that sonic
resonance added to their feeling of uneasiness it was hard to tell.
But the narrow corridor, the pallid light, fed their sensation of
being trapped.
“Looks as if we are stuck,” the jetman observed,
“unless we go out into the valley again. How about that?
Where’s Wilcox and Shannon?”
Dane explained. But he, too, hoped that the others would use the
horn and open the outer door. With the intention of getting back to
the entrance he walked along the hall. That passage had run
straight, he remembered, and then there had been a right angled
turn around which Kosti had disappeared in pursuit of
Snall—
But when Dane came to that corner and made the turn he was
fronted not by the hall he remembered, but a pocket of some three
or four feet. He stopped, bewildered. There had been only one
corridor—with no openings along its sides. Before him now
should be a smooth stretch leading to the outer door. But instead
here was another wall. He reached out and his nails scraped on its
slick surface. It was there all right—no illusion.
A muffled cry brought him about and he was just in tune to see
another barrier appear out of the side wall to seal off a segment
of the passage, one to cut him away from the others.
Dane threw himself forward, barely getting through the narrowing
space. And he might not have made it had Kosti not come to his aid
and used his bull’s strength to wrestle against the sliding
wall. But as Dane won to the other side, it clicked triumphantly
into place and they were boxed in a six foot section of
corridor.
“Neat,” Kosti commented. “Got us shut up until
they have time to attend to us.”
Mura shrugged. “It cannot now be doubted that Snall got
through with his alarm.”
But the steward did not appear bothered. Kosti thumped the wall, listening intently as if he hoped to discover the trick of
its opening by the sound he so invoked.
“Remote control, of course,” Mura continued in his
placid tone. “Yes, they will now believe that they have us
safe—”
“Only they don’t, do they?” Observance of
Mura led Dane to that question.
“That we shall see. The outer door is controlled by
sonics. I heard Tang say that the installation interference lies
partly in the non-audible range. So it may be we have an answer to
this trap.”
He unsealed the front of his tunic and groped in the inner
breast pocket all Traders used for their most prized possessions.
He took out a three inch tube of polished white substance which
might have been bone.
Kosti stopped his thumping. “Say—that’s your
Feedle call—”
“Just so. Now we shall see if it can be used for another
purpose than to summon the insects of Karmuli—”
He put the miniature pipe to his lips and blew, though no sound
issued to be caught by Terran hearing. Kosti’s shade of
elation vanished.
“No use—”
Mura smiled. “You have no patience, Karl. This has ten
ultrasonic notes. I have only used one. Give me a chance to try the
others before you are sure we do not possess a key to these
doors.”
There followed long moments of silence with no visible
result.
“Not going to work—” Kosti shook his head.
But Mura paid no attention. At intervals he took the pipe from
his lips, rested, and then tried again. Dane was certain that he
must have tried more than ten notes, but the steward showed no sign
of discouragement.
“That’s more than ten notes,” accused
Kosti.
“The signal that opened the first door employed three. The
same number combination may apply here.” He raised the pipe
once more.
Kosti sat down on the floor, obviously divorcing himself from
proceedings he deemed useless. Dane squatted beside him. But Mura’s patience was infinite. One hour passed—by
Dane’s watch, and they were well into the second. Dane
wondered about their air supply. Unless it oozed through the walls
as did the light, he could see no way in which it was renewed. And
yet that about them was fresh.
“That tootling,” Kosti sounded fretful,
“isn’t going to do any good. You’ll wear the pipe
out before you get through this—” he struck his hand
against the side wall.
And under his touch the section of wall moved, showing a dark
crack a couple of inches wide extending from the floor to a point
six feet up.
"IT IS TIME, I believe,” Mura had come up on the
lookout point, “to follow the tactics of our fellow fighters,
these ‘bogies’. How is your throwing arm, Thorson?” He stooped and searched the ground, rising a few moments
later grasping a round stone about as big as his fist.
Taking aim he pitched it at an angle into the valley and they
saw and heard it strike against a rock there. Dane saw the reason
for such an attack upon the crawler. Blaster fire was no respecter
of persons. In an exchange of such potent forces Rip might well be
killed or maimed. But rocks expertly thrown from above would not
only knock out the outlaws but would suggest an attack by native
Limbians and not betray the identity of the attackers.
Kosti circled around the foot of the cliff and took cover below
the perch favoured by Mura, while Dane skimmed across the valley
and climbed above eye level to a narrow ledge on which he might
crouch with a pile of hastily collected ammunition.
They were not given long for such preparations, the clinking
passage of the crawler echoed ahead as a warning and the three
Traders took to cover as the vehicle crept into sight across the
uneven terrain. It crashed through bushes until the driver slowed
to a halt. His helmet com-unit must have been on, for, while his
natural voice could only have been an undistinguishable murmur to
those in hiding, his words were loud in their ears.
“There’s Snall’s wagon—piled up!
What’s been—”
One of Rip’s guards scrambled off the crawler as if to go
forward and investigate. And in that moment Mura’s arm
signalled Dane to attack.
A stone thudded against the helmet of the would-be investigator,
sending him off balance to clutch at the tread of the crawler for
support. Dane slammed another in his direction and then aimed for
the driver of the machine.
They were yelling now and Rip had come to life. Though his arms
were tied behind him, he threw himself at the man to his left, his
effort carrying them both to the ground beyond. The driver turned
on the power of the crawler so that it ground ahead through the
rain of stones the three Traders hurled at it.
One of the outlaws had pulled himself aboard again and now the
other wriggled from under Rip’s body. He had his blaster in
hand and he bent over Shannon with an evil grin. Then his face was
smashed into a red pulp. He screamed horribly and reeled back. The
one who had managed to climb aboard looked back in time to witness
his fall.
“Kraner—those little beasts got Kraner! No,
don’t wait to collect that Trader! If you do they’ll
get us!”
The crawler kept on towards the mountains. For some reason the
two on board it had not used their blasters to rake the bushes. The
very unexpectedness of the attack and the loss of one of their
company left them only with the thought of escape.
They rounded the length of the stranded crawler and were out of
sight before Kosti crept out of hiding and went down to Rip, where
Dane joined him seconds later.
Shannon lay on his side, his arms bound at a painful angle
behind him, his face showing a closed eye surrounded with a dark
bruise, a cut lip, raw and bloody.
“You have been to the wars,” Kosti grunted
as he knelt to saw at the cords with his bush knife.
Rip’s words were mumbled as he tried to move his torn
mouth. “They jumped me—I was almost to the Queen when
they jumped me. They’ve the ship pinned here—some sort
of ray which crashes any ship within a certain distance of the
planet—”
Dane slipped an arm under Rip’s shoulders and helped him
to sit up. The other gave a grunt and a muffled exclamation as he
moved, one hand going to his side.
“More damages?” Kosti reached out to unseal
Rip’s tunic but Shannon parried the investigating hand.
“Nothing we can fix here and now. Think I’ve cracked
a rib—or maybe two. But, listen, they’ve the
Queen—”
“We know. Picked up a prisoner,” Dane told him.
“He was driving that crawler over there. Told us all about
what’s going on here. Maybe, using him, we can make some sort
of a deal. Can you walk—?”
“Yes, it might be well to withdraw,” Mura stepped
down to where they were. “They had their coms on when we
jumped them. It is uncertain how much of the succeeding events have
been overheard by their fellows.”
Rip could walk, with support. And they got him around to their
own crawler and Wilcox.
“Any sign of Kamil?” Kosti wanted to know.
“They have him all right,” Rip replied. “But I
think that he’s with their main party. They have quite a few
men. And they can keep the Queen here until she rusts away—if
they want to.”
“So Snall here has already informed us,” Wilcox
observed bleakly. “He also says that he does not know where
this mysterious installation is. I’m inclined to doubt
that—”
At that the bound and gagged prisoner wriggled and made muffled
sounds, trying to indicate his sincerity.
“Down that valley is one way in, at least in to their
major supply depot and barracks,” Rip informed them.
“And the installation can’t be too far from
that.”
Dane touched the wriggling Snall with the toe of his boot.
“D’you suppose we could exchange this one for Ali? Or
at least use him to get us into the place?”
Rip answered that. “I doubt it. They’re a pretty
hard lot. Snall’s life or death wouldn’t matter much as
far as they are concerned.”
And the look in those bloodshot eyes above the gag Kosti had
planted, bore out that Snall agreed with that. He had little faith
in assistance from his own companions unless his rescue was
necessary to their preservation.
“Three of us on our feet and able to go, and two
crooks,” Wilcox mused. “How many men have they in the mountains,
Shannon, any idea of that?”
“Maybe a hundred. It seems to be a well organized
outfit,” Rip replied dispiritedly.
“We can sit here until we starve,” Kosti broke the
ensuing silence, “and that won’t get us anywhere, will
it? I’d say take some chances and hope for luck. It
can’t all be bad!”
“Snall could show us the way in—at least into the
part he knows,” Dane said. “And we could scout
around—size up the country and the odds.”
“If we could only contact the Queen!” Wilcox beat
his knee with his fist.
“With the sun up—it is now—there is perhaps a
way,” Mura began.
His way entailed going back to the wrecked crawler in the second
valley and unscrewing a bright metal plate which backed the
driver’s seat. With Dane’s help, the steward got this
to the top of the cliff. And they wedged their prize at an angle
until they caught the sun on its surface and flashed the light
across the mile or so of rugged territory which lay between them
and the ship.
Mura smiled. “This may do it. It should be as good as our
torches in the night if it works. And unless those outlaws down
there have eyes in the back of their skulls, it will not be seen
except from control—”
But once their crude com was in place they had other
preparations to make. Wilcox, Rip, Kosti and the prisoner moved
from the hideout in one valley on into the other. The strange
crawler was righted and found to be undamaged and ready to move.
And while the other four waited Mura and Dane climbed once more to
the heights where they sweated over the plate until they
laboriously flashed twice over their message to the Queen.
Then there was nothing to do but stay to see if their code had
been read. Only if the ship made the proper reply in action could
they move.
And that answer came just as Dane had given up hope. Round ports
blinked like eyes on the sides of the Queen! There was a bark of sound and smoke arose by a hidden pocket of the
besiegers—the one which lay between the ship and the valley.
Their message had been read, those on the ship would keep the enemy
bracketed while the party in the valley made their dash for the
outlaw headquarters on a desperate attempt at surprise.
They were all able to ride on this carrier, the prisoner
sandwiched in between Dane and Mura, Kosti at the controls. It had
what their own crawler had lacked, handholds, and they clung to
these as the thing rattled along.
Dane watched the bushy slopes they passed. He had not forgotten
the bogy attack. It might be true that the creatures were
nocturnal. But on the other hand, once aroused, perhaps the globes
might still be in hiding there, waiting to cut off any small
party.
The valley curved and narrowed. Now under the jolting carrier
the surface was mostly stream-bed and the water crept up to lap at
the edge of the platform. There were signs here, as there had been
in the valley near the ruins, that this way had been in use as a
road—scratches on the rocks, tracks crushed in the
gravel.
Then before them the stream became a small falls, splashing into
a pool and the valley ended in a barrier cliff. Kosti jerked the
gag from Snall’s mouth.
“All right,” he said in the tone of one who was not
going to be put off, “what do we do to get through here,
bright boy?”
Snall licked his puffed lips and glowered back. Bound and gagged
as he had been, helpless as he was, he had regained a large measure
of his confidence.
“Find out for yourself,” he retorted.
Kosti sighed. “I hate to waste time, fella. But if you
must be softened up, you’re going to be—get me?”
Something else got them all first. A stone missed Kosti’s
head by a scant inch as he bent over Snall. And a larger one struck
the captive’s body, bringing a sharp cry of pain out of
him.
“Bogies!” Dane fanned his sleep ray up a wall where
he could see nothing move, but from which he was sure the stones
had been thrown.
Another rock cracked viciously against the crawler as Wilcox hit
the dirt on the other side, pulling Rip with him to shelter half
under the machine. Mura was using his ray, too, standing
unconcerned knee deep in the pool and beaming the cliff foot by
foot as if he had all the time in the world and intended to make
this a thorough job.
It was Snall who ended that strange blind battle. Kosti had
dragged him to safety and must have cut his bonds so that he could
move with greater speed. But now the outlaw flung himself out of
shelter, straight for the controls of the carrier. He brought his
fist down upon a button set in the panel and was rewarded by a high
pitched tinkle—a tinkle which resounded in the Terran’s
heads until Dane had to fight to keep his hands from his ears.
The answer to this assault upon their eardrums was as
preposterous as anything Dane had ever witnessed in a Video
performance. The supposedly solid rock wall fronting the end of the
valley opened, one piece of the stone falling back to provide a
dark gap. And, since their captive was prepared for that he was the
first through the door, darting from under Kosti’s clutching
hands.
With an inarticulate roar the jetman followed Snall. And Dane
pounded after both of them into the maw of the cliff. From the
sunlight of Limbo they were translated to a twilight grey, strung
out like beads on a string, with Snall, proving himself a good
distance runner, well at the head.
Dane was inside the straight corridor before his common sense
took command once more. He shouted to Kosti and his voice echoed in
a hollow boom. Though he slowed, the other two kept on into the
dusky reaches ahead.
Dane turned back to the entrance, still undecided. To be cut off
here—their party divided. What should he do, run after Kosti,
or try to bring in the others? He was in time to see Mura come in
at a walking pace. And then, to Dane’s horror, the outlet to
the world closed! There was a clang of metal meeting metal and the
sunlight was instantly cut to evening.
“The door!” Dane hurled himself at the masked
opening with the same fervour with which he had followed Snall into the
corridor. But before he reached that spot Mura’s steadying
grip closed on his arm, restraining him with a strength he had
forgotten the smaller man possessed.
“Do not be alarmed,” the steward said. “There
is no danger. Wilcox and Shannon are in safety. They are armed with
the sleep rays, in addition they know how to operate the horn to
open the gate when necessary. But where is Karl? Has he
disappeared?”
Mura’s tone had a soothing effect. The little man gave
such an impression of unruffled efficiency that Dane lost that
panic which had sent him running for the entrance.
“The last I saw he was still after Snall.”
“Let us hope that he has caught up with him. I would be
better pleased if we walked these ways with Snall under our
control—not with him somewhere ahead to warn his
companions.”
They hurried on and discovered that the corridor made a sharp
turn to the left. Dane listened, hoping to hear the sounds of
running feet. But when the thump-thump did come it was made by a
single pair of boots. And a minute later the jetman barged into
view his face very sober in the wan light radiated from the smooth
walls about them.
“Where’s Snall?” Dane asked.
Kosti grimaced. “He got through one of those condemned
wall back there—”
“Just where?” Mura went in the direction from which
the jetman had just come.
“The door snapped shut as I got to it,” Kosti
protested. “We can’t follow him. Unless one of you
brought that tootler off the crawler.”
The passage stretched only a short distance beyond, ending in a
wall as blank of any opening as the cliffs without. Though this was
not of stone but of the seamless substances which made the
buildings in the Forerunner ruins.
“This wall?” Mura thumped the surface as Kosti
nodded gloomily.
”Can’t see any opening there now—”
The humming vibration, to which they had become so accustomed
that they no longer consciously noted it, sang through the walls,
through the flooring under their feet. How much that sonic
resonance added to their feeling of uneasiness it was hard to tell.
But the narrow corridor, the pallid light, fed their sensation of
being trapped.
“Looks as if we are stuck,” the jetman observed,
“unless we go out into the valley again. How about that?
Where’s Wilcox and Shannon?”
Dane explained. But he, too, hoped that the others would use the
horn and open the outer door. With the intention of getting back to
the entrance he walked along the hall. That passage had run
straight, he remembered, and then there had been a right angled
turn around which Kosti had disappeared in pursuit of
Snall—
But when Dane came to that corner and made the turn he was
fronted not by the hall he remembered, but a pocket of some three
or four feet. He stopped, bewildered. There had been only one
corridor—with no openings along its sides. Before him now
should be a smooth stretch leading to the outer door. But instead
here was another wall. He reached out and his nails scraped on its
slick surface. It was there all right—no illusion.
A muffled cry brought him about and he was just in tune to see
another barrier appear out of the side wall to seal off a segment
of the passage, one to cut him away from the others.
Dane threw himself forward, barely getting through the narrowing
space. And he might not have made it had Kosti not come to his aid
and used his bull’s strength to wrestle against the sliding
wall. But as Dane won to the other side, it clicked triumphantly
into place and they were boxed in a six foot section of
corridor.
“Neat,” Kosti commented. “Got us shut up until
they have time to attend to us.”
Mura shrugged. “It cannot now be doubted that Snall got
through with his alarm.”
But the steward did not appear bothered. Kosti thumped the wall, listening intently as if he hoped to discover the trick of
its opening by the sound he so invoked.
“Remote control, of course,” Mura continued in his
placid tone. “Yes, they will now believe that they have us
safe—”
“Only they don’t, do they?” Observance of
Mura led Dane to that question.
“That we shall see. The outer door is controlled by
sonics. I heard Tang say that the installation interference lies
partly in the non-audible range. So it may be we have an answer to
this trap.”
He unsealed the front of his tunic and groped in the inner
breast pocket all Traders used for their most prized possessions.
He took out a three inch tube of polished white substance which
might have been bone.
Kosti stopped his thumping. “Say—that’s your
Feedle call—”
“Just so. Now we shall see if it can be used for another
purpose than to summon the insects of Karmuli—”
He put the miniature pipe to his lips and blew, though no sound
issued to be caught by Terran hearing. Kosti’s shade of
elation vanished.
“No use—”
Mura smiled. “You have no patience, Karl. This has ten
ultrasonic notes. I have only used one. Give me a chance to try the
others before you are sure we do not possess a key to these
doors.”
There followed long moments of silence with no visible
result.
“Not going to work—” Kosti shook his head.
But Mura paid no attention. At intervals he took the pipe from
his lips, rested, and then tried again. Dane was certain that he
must have tried more than ten notes, but the steward showed no sign
of discouragement.
“That’s more than ten notes,” accused
Kosti.
“The signal that opened the first door employed three. The
same number combination may apply here.” He raised the pipe
once more.
Kosti sat down on the floor, obviously divorcing himself from
proceedings he deemed useless. Dane squatted beside him. But Mura’s patience was infinite. One hour passed—by
Dane’s watch, and they were well into the second. Dane
wondered about their air supply. Unless it oozed through the walls
as did the light, he could see no way in which it was renewed. And
yet that about them was fresh.
“That tootling,” Kosti sounded fretful,
“isn’t going to do any good. You’ll wear the pipe
out before you get through this—” he struck his hand
against the side wall.
And under his touch the section of wall moved, showing a dark
crack a couple of inches wide extending from the floor to a point
six feet up.