AGAIN DANE WAS conscious of the thick quality of the Limbian
night. Since the planet possessed no satellite, there was nothing
to break the dark but those cold pin points which marked the stars.
Even the visa-screen they had set up below could hardly pierce the
gloom, though it was equipped with a tri-strength delve-ray.
Tau stretched and shifted in his seat, inadvertently nudging
Dane. Although they were wearing double-lined winter outer tunics
and the temperature of the closed flitter was supposedly akin to
the interior of the Queen, an insidious chill caught at them. They
had divided the night into watches, the two off duty at the tiny
receiving screen trying to nap. But Dane found rest beyond him. He
stared out at the dark which folded about them like a smothering
curtain.
He did not know what time it was that he saw the first
flash—a red sword of light striking up into the sky in the
west. At his exclamation Ali on duty at the screen glanced
up and Tau stirred into wakefulness.
“Over there!” They might not be able to follow his
pointing finger but by now they needed no such guide. The flashes
of light were multiplied—then they were gone—leaving
the night darker than ever.
It was Ali who spoke first: “Blaster fire!” His
fingers were already busy on the keys, flashing a message to the
Queen.
For an instant Dane felt a prick of panic and then he realized
that the disturbance was far westward of the Queen. The ship had
not been attacked in their absence.
Ali reported the evidences of distant battle. From the ship the
flares had not been sighted and the men there knew nothing of any trouble. Nor had they seen, across the barrens, any
disturbance at the ruins where Rich was encamped.
“Do we stick here?” Ali asked a last question. And
the reply came promptly that they should—unless forced to
withdraw. It was more than ever necessary to discover the nature of
any native Limbian life.
But the screen which connected them with the valley below
remained obstinately dark. There was the rock, the trade goods, and
nothing else.
They kept two watches now, one for the screen and the other
westward. But no more flares split the night. If a battle had been
in progress it was now over.
By Dane’s reckoning it was close to dawn and it was his
trick at the screen when the first hint of change came. The
movement on the plate before him was so slight that at first he
thought he had been mistaken. But a bush to the right of the rock
below provided a dark background for something so weird he could
not believe that he was seeing aright. Luck alone, and reflex
action, pressed his finger down on the button of the recorder at
the right moment.
For the thing was not only unsubstantial, it was also fast,
moving at a speed which blurred its already wispy outline. Dane had
seen something, he was sure of that. But what it had been, even its
general form, he could not have sworn to.
With both Ali and Tau breathing down the back of his neck, Dane
hung over the screen, alert to the slightest movement on its
surface. But, though dawn was upon them, and the light was growing
better all the tune, they could see nothing now but leaves
fluttered by the wind. Whatever had passed that way had had no
interest in the trade display. They would have to depend upon the
film from the recorder to discover what it was.
Limbo’s sun began the upward climb. The rime of night-born
frost which had gathered on the stones of the heights was lapped
away. But the valley remained deserted, Dane’s visitor did
not return.
The other flitter arrived with a fresh crew to take over the
post. Rip walked over to speak to the yawning crew of the
first.
“Any luck?” he wanted to know.
“Got something with the recorder—I hope,” Dane
replied, but he was feeling more apologetic than triumphant. That
faint shadowy thing might not be the owner of the fields—just
some passing animal.
“Captain says for you to take a look-see down west before
you check in,” Rip added to Tau. “Use your own
judgment, but don’t run into anything serious if you can help
it.”
The Medic nodded. Ali was at the controls and they took to the
air, leaving the relieving crew of the other flitter to take over
their watch. Below them spread the now familiar pattern of small,
narrow valleys, two or three showing squares of fields. But though
Ali buzzed at a low altitude over these, there was no life but
vegetation below. The Terran flitter was perhaps five miles on to
the west before it came down over a scene of horror.
Smoke still curled sluggishly from smouldering brush and the
black burns of high voltage blaster fire crossed and re-crossed the
ground, cutting noisome paths through greenery and searing soil and
rock.
But it was not that which attracted their attention. It was the
things, three of them, huddled together in a rock pocket
as if they had tried to make a last stand there against a weapon
they did not understand. The contorted, badly burned bodies had
little recognizable form now, but the three in the flitter knew
that they had once been living creatures.
Ali went for a short run above the valley floor. There was no
sign of any life. He manoeuvred for a landing close to that pocket.
But it wasn’t until they had left the flitter and started to
cross a rocky outcrop that they came upon the fourth victim.
He—or it—had been singed by the flame, but not
killed at once. Enough will to live had remained to send the
pitiful wreckage crawling into a narrow crevice where it must have
clung until death loosened its hold and allowed it to tumble
slackly into sight again.
Tau went down on one knee beside the twisted body. But Dane, his
nostrils filled with a sickening stench which was not all born of the smouldering green stuff, took only one quick
look before he closed his eyes and fought a masterly engagement
with his churning stomach.
That hadn’t been a man! It resembled nothing he had ever
seen or heard described. It—it wasn’t real—it
couldn’t be! He gained a minor victory, opened his eyes, and
forced himself to look again.
Even allowing for the injuries which had killed it, the creature
was bizarre to the point of nightmare. Its body consisted of two
globes, one half as large as the other. There was no discernible
head at all. From the larger globe protruded two pairs of very
thin, four jointed limbs which must have been highly flexible. From
the small globe another pair which separated at the second joint
into limber tentacles, each of which ended in a cluster of
hair-fine appendages. The globes were joined by a wasp’s
slenderness of waist. As far as Dane could see, and he
couldn’t bring himself to the close examination which
absorbed Tau, there were no features at all—no eyes, ears, or
mouth.
But the oddest sight of all were the globes which formed the
body. They were a greyish-white, but semi-transparent. And through
the surface one could sight reddish structural supports which must
have served the creature as bones, as well as organs Dane had no
wish to explore.
“Great space!” Ali exploded. “You can look
right through them!”
He was exaggerating—but not so much. The Limbians—if
this were a Limbian—were far more tenuous than any creature
the Terrans had found before. And Dane was sure that the record
film would show that it was a thing such as this which had passed
the contact point in the other valley.
Ali stepped around the body to examine the scars left by the
blast which had driven the creature into the crevice. He touched a
finger gingerly to a blackened smear on the rock and then held it
close to his nose.
“Blaster right enough.”
“Do you think Rich—?”
Ali gazed down the valley. Like all the others they had yet
sighted it ran from the towering mountains to the blasted plain,
and they could not be too far from the ruins where the
archaeologists had gone to earth.
“But—why?” Dane asked a second question before
his first had been answered.
Had the globe things attacked Rich and his men? Somehow Dane
could not accept that. To his mind the limp body Tau was working
over was pitifully defenceless. It held not the slightest hint of
menace.
“That’s the big question.” Ali tramped on,
past the hollow where lay those other dreadfully contorted bodies,
down to the edge of the stream, which this valley, as did all the
cultivated ones, cradled in its centre, the fields strung out along
it.
Plain to read here was the mark of the invader. No feet had left
that pair of wide ruts crushed deep into the soft ground of the
fields. Dane stopped short.
“Crawler! But our crawlers—”
“Are just where they should be, parked under the Queen or
in their storage compartments,” Ali finished for him.
“And since Rich couldn’t have brought one here in a kit
bag, we must believe that Limbo is not as barren of life as Survey
certified it to be.” He stood at the edge of the stream and
then squatted to study a patch of drying mud. “Track’s
odd though—”
Although his opinion had not been asked, Dane joined the
Engineer-apprentice. The tread mark had left a pattern, clear as
print, for about four inches. He was familiar with the operation of
crawlers as they pertained to his own duties. He could even, if the
need arose, make minor repairs on one. But he couldn’t have
identified any difference in vehicles from their tread patterns.
There he was willing to accept Ali’s superior learning.
Kamil’s next move was a complete mystery to Dane. Still on
his knees he began measuring the distance between the two furrows,
using a small rule from his belt tool kit for a gauge. At last Dane
dared to ask a question:
“What’s wrong?”
For a moment he thought that Ali wasn’t going to
answer.
Then the other sat back on his heels, wiped dust from the rule,
and looked up.
“A standard crawler’s a four-two-eight,” he
stated didactically. “A scooter is a three-seven-eight. A
flamer’s carriage runs five-seven-twelve.”
The actual figures meant very little to Dane, but he knew their
significance. Within the Federation machinery was now completely
standardized. It had to be so that repairs from one world to the
next would be simplified. Ali had recited the measurements of the
three types of ground vehicles in common use on the majority of
Federation planets. Though, by rights, a flamer was a war machine,
used only by the military or Patrol forces, except on pioneer
worlds where its wide heat beam could be turned against rank forest
or jungle growth.
“And this isn’t any of those,” Dane
guessed.
“Right. It’s three-two-four—but it’s
heavy, too. Or else it was transporting close to an over-load. You
don’t get ruts like these from a scooter or crawler
travelling light.” He was an engineer, he should know, Dane
conceded.
“Then what was it?”
Ali shrugged. “Something not standard—low, narrow,
or it couldn’t snake through here, and able to carry a good
load. But nothing on our books is like it.”
It was Dane’s turn to study the cliffs about them.
“Only one way it could go—up—or
down—”
Ali got to bis feet, “I’ll go down,” he
glanced over at the busy Tau engrossed in his grisly task,
“nobody’s going to drag him away from there until he
learns all he can.” He shuddered, perhaps in exaggeration,
perhaps in earnest. “I have a feeling that it isn’t
wise to stay here too long. Any scout will have to be a quick
one—”
Dane turned up stream. “I’ll go up,” he said
firmly, it was not Ali’s place to give orders, they were
equal in rank. He started off, walking between the tracks without
looking back.
He was concentrating so on his determination to prove that he
could think properly for himself that he made a fatal slip,
inexcusable in any Trade explorer. Though he continued to wear his helmet, along with all the other field equipment, he totally
forgot to set his personal com-unit on alert, and so went blindly
off into the unknown with no contact with either of the others.
But at the moment he was far more intent on those tracks which
lured him on, up a gradually narrowing valley towards the mountain
walls. The climbing sun stuck across his path, but there were pools
of purple shadow where the cliffs walled off its rays.
The trail left by the crawler ran as straight as the general
contour of the ground allowed. Two of the lacy winged flying things
they had glimpsed in the other valley skimmed close to the surface
of the stream and then took off high into the chill air.
Now the greenery was sparser. He had not passed a field for some
time. And underfoot the surface of the valley was inclining up in a
gentle slope. The walls curved, so that Dane walked more warily,
having no desire to round a projection and meet a blaster user face
to face.
He was certain in his own mind that Dr. Rich had something to do
with this. But where did this crawler come from? Had the Doctor
been on Limbo before? Or had he broken into some cache of Survey
supplies? But there was Ali’s certainty that the vehicle was
not orthodox.
The trail ended abruptly and in such a manner as to stop Dane
short, staring in unbelief. For those ruts led straight to a solid,
blank wall of rock, vanishing beneath it as if the machine which
had made them had been driven straight through!
There is always, Dane hastily reminded himself, some logical
explanation for the impossible. And not Video ones about
“force walls” and such either. If those tracks went
into the rock, it was an illusion—or an opening—and it
was up to him to discover which.
His boots crunched on sand and gravel until he was in touching
distance of the barrier. It was then that he became aware of
something else, a vibration. It was very silent there in the
cramped pocket which was the end of the valley, no wind blew, no
leaves rustled. And yet there was something unquiet in the air, a
stirring just at the far edge of his sensitiveness to sound and
movement.
On impulse he set the palms of his hands against the stone of
the cliff. And he felt it instantly, running up his arms into his
body until his flesh and bones were only a recorder for that
monstrous beat-beat-beat—relayed to him through the stuff of
Limbo itself. Yet, when he passed his fingers searchingly over the
rough stone, studied each inch of it intently, he could see no
break in its surface, no sign of a door, no reason for that heavy
thump, thump which shook his nerves. The vibration was unpleasant,
almost menacing. He snatched his hands away, suddenly afraid of
being trapped in that dull rhythm. But now he was sure that Limbo
was not what it seemed— a lifeless, dead world.
For the first time he remembered that he should have maintained
contact with the others, and hurriedly turned the key on his
com-unit. Instantly Tau’s voice rang thinly in his ears.
“Calling Ali—calling Thorson—come
in—come in!” There was an urgency in the Medic’s
voice which brought Dane away from the wall, set him on the back
trail even as he replied:
“Thorson here. Am at end of valley. Wish to
report—”
But the other cut into that impatiently. “Return to
flitter! Ali, Thorson, return to flitter!”
“Thorson returning.” Dane started at the best pace
he could muster down the valley. But as he trotted, slipping and
sliding on the loose stones and gravel, Tau’s voice continued
to call Ali. And from the engineer-apprentice there came no answer
at all.
Breathing hard, Dane reached the place where they had left the
Medic. As he came into sight Tau waved him to the side of the
flitter.
“Where’s Ali?” “Where’s
Kamil?” Their demands came together and they stared at each
other.
Dane answered first. “He said he was going down
stream—to follow the crawler tracks we found. I went
upstream—”
“Then it must have been he who—” Tau was
frowning. He turned on his heel and studied the valley leading to
the plains. The presence of water had encouraged a thicker growth
of brush there and it presented a wall except for where the stream
cut a passage.
“But what happened?” Dane wanted to know.
“I got a call on com—it was cut off almost
immediately—”
“Not mine, I was off circuit,” returned Dane before
he thought. It was only then that he realized what he had done. No
one on field duty goes off circuit out on scout, that was a rule
even a First Circler in the Pool had by heart. And he had done it
the first time he was on duty! He could feel the heat spreading up
into his cheeks. But he offered no explanations nor excuses. The
fault was his and he would have to stand up to the
consequences.
“Ali must be in trouble,” Tau made no other comment
as he climbed in behind the controls of the flitter, a very quiet
Dane following him.
They arose jerkily, with none of the smooth perfection
Ali’s piloting had supplied. But once in the air Tau pointed
the nose of the flitter down valley, cutting speed to just enough
to keep them airborne. They watched the ground below. But there was
nothing to see but the marks of blaster fire and beyond undisturbed
green broken by bare patches of gravel and jutting rock.
They could also sight the crawler tracks and Dane related the
information he had. Tau’s countenance was sober.
“If we don’t find Ali, we must report to the
Queen—”
That was only common sense, Dane knew, but he dreaded having to
admit his own negligence. And perhaps his act was worse than just
carelessness in not using the com-unit, perhaps he should have
insisted on their sticking together, deserted though the valley
appeared to be.
“We’re up against something nasty here,” Tau
continued. “Whoever used those blasters was outside the
law—”
The Federation law dealing with X-Tees was severe, as Dane well
knew. Parts of the code, stripped of the legal verbiage, had to be
memorized at the Pool. You could defend yourself against the attack
of aliens, but on no provocation, except in defence of his life,
could a Trader use a blaster or other weapon against an X-Tee. Even
sleep rays were frowned upon, though most Traders packed them when
going into unknown territory among primitive tribes.
The men of the Queen had landed unarmed on Limbo, and they would continue unarmed until such a time as the situation
was so grave that either their lives or the ship was in danger. But
in this valley a blaster had been used in the wanton indulgence of
someone’s sadistic hatred for the globe creatures.
“They weren’t attacking—those globe things, I
mean?”
Tau’s brown face was grim as he shook his head.
“They had no weapons at all. I’d say from the evidence
that they were attacked without warning, just mown down. Maybe for
the fun of it!”
And that projected such a picture of horror that Tau,
conditioned by life under the Trade Creed, stopped short.
Below them the valley began to widen out, cutting in a fan shape
into the plain. There was no sign of Ali anywhere on that fan. He
had vanished as if he had stepped through the cliff wall. The
cliff! Dane, remembering the end of the crawler trail, pressed
against the windshield to inspect those walls. But there were no
tracks ending before them.
The flitter lost altitude as Tau concentrated on landing.
“We must report to the Queen,” he said as he set them
down. Not leaving his seat he reached for the long-range beam
mike.
AGAIN DANE WAS conscious of the thick quality of the Limbian
night. Since the planet possessed no satellite, there was nothing
to break the dark but those cold pin points which marked the stars.
Even the visa-screen they had set up below could hardly pierce the
gloom, though it was equipped with a tri-strength delve-ray.
Tau stretched and shifted in his seat, inadvertently nudging
Dane. Although they were wearing double-lined winter outer tunics
and the temperature of the closed flitter was supposedly akin to
the interior of the Queen, an insidious chill caught at them. They
had divided the night into watches, the two off duty at the tiny
receiving screen trying to nap. But Dane found rest beyond him. He
stared out at the dark which folded about them like a smothering
curtain.
He did not know what time it was that he saw the first
flash—a red sword of light striking up into the sky in the
west. At his exclamation Ali on duty at the screen glanced
up and Tau stirred into wakefulness.
“Over there!” They might not be able to follow his
pointing finger but by now they needed no such guide. The flashes
of light were multiplied—then they were gone—leaving
the night darker than ever.
It was Ali who spoke first: “Blaster fire!” His
fingers were already busy on the keys, flashing a message to the
Queen.
For an instant Dane felt a prick of panic and then he realized
that the disturbance was far westward of the Queen. The ship had
not been attacked in their absence.
Ali reported the evidences of distant battle. From the ship the
flares had not been sighted and the men there knew nothing of any trouble. Nor had they seen, across the barrens, any
disturbance at the ruins where Rich was encamped.
“Do we stick here?” Ali asked a last question. And
the reply came promptly that they should—unless forced to
withdraw. It was more than ever necessary to discover the nature of
any native Limbian life.
But the screen which connected them with the valley below
remained obstinately dark. There was the rock, the trade goods, and
nothing else.
They kept two watches now, one for the screen and the other
westward. But no more flares split the night. If a battle had been
in progress it was now over.
By Dane’s reckoning it was close to dawn and it was his
trick at the screen when the first hint of change came. The
movement on the plate before him was so slight that at first he
thought he had been mistaken. But a bush to the right of the rock
below provided a dark background for something so weird he could
not believe that he was seeing aright. Luck alone, and reflex
action, pressed his finger down on the button of the recorder at
the right moment.
For the thing was not only unsubstantial, it was also fast,
moving at a speed which blurred its already wispy outline. Dane had
seen something, he was sure of that. But what it had been, even its
general form, he could not have sworn to.
With both Ali and Tau breathing down the back of his neck, Dane
hung over the screen, alert to the slightest movement on its
surface. But, though dawn was upon them, and the light was growing
better all the tune, they could see nothing now but leaves
fluttered by the wind. Whatever had passed that way had had no
interest in the trade display. They would have to depend upon the
film from the recorder to discover what it was.
Limbo’s sun began the upward climb. The rime of night-born
frost which had gathered on the stones of the heights was lapped
away. But the valley remained deserted, Dane’s visitor did
not return.
The other flitter arrived with a fresh crew to take over the
post. Rip walked over to speak to the yawning crew of the
first.
“Any luck?” he wanted to know.
“Got something with the recorder—I hope,” Dane
replied, but he was feeling more apologetic than triumphant. That
faint shadowy thing might not be the owner of the fields—just
some passing animal.
“Captain says for you to take a look-see down west before
you check in,” Rip added to Tau. “Use your own
judgment, but don’t run into anything serious if you can help
it.”
The Medic nodded. Ali was at the controls and they took to the
air, leaving the relieving crew of the other flitter to take over
their watch. Below them spread the now familiar pattern of small,
narrow valleys, two or three showing squares of fields. But though
Ali buzzed at a low altitude over these, there was no life but
vegetation below. The Terran flitter was perhaps five miles on to
the west before it came down over a scene of horror.
Smoke still curled sluggishly from smouldering brush and the
black burns of high voltage blaster fire crossed and re-crossed the
ground, cutting noisome paths through greenery and searing soil and
rock.
But it was not that which attracted their attention. It was the
things, three of them, huddled together in a rock pocket
as if they had tried to make a last stand there against a weapon
they did not understand. The contorted, badly burned bodies had
little recognizable form now, but the three in the flitter knew
that they had once been living creatures.
Ali went for a short run above the valley floor. There was no
sign of any life. He manoeuvred for a landing close to that pocket.
But it wasn’t until they had left the flitter and started to
cross a rocky outcrop that they came upon the fourth victim.
He—or it—had been singed by the flame, but not
killed at once. Enough will to live had remained to send the
pitiful wreckage crawling into a narrow crevice where it must have
clung until death loosened its hold and allowed it to tumble
slackly into sight again.
Tau went down on one knee beside the twisted body. But Dane, his
nostrils filled with a sickening stench which was not all born of the smouldering green stuff, took only one quick
look before he closed his eyes and fought a masterly engagement
with his churning stomach.
That hadn’t been a man! It resembled nothing he had ever
seen or heard described. It—it wasn’t real—it
couldn’t be! He gained a minor victory, opened his eyes, and
forced himself to look again.
Even allowing for the injuries which had killed it, the creature
was bizarre to the point of nightmare. Its body consisted of two
globes, one half as large as the other. There was no discernible
head at all. From the larger globe protruded two pairs of very
thin, four jointed limbs which must have been highly flexible. From
the small globe another pair which separated at the second joint
into limber tentacles, each of which ended in a cluster of
hair-fine appendages. The globes were joined by a wasp’s
slenderness of waist. As far as Dane could see, and he
couldn’t bring himself to the close examination which
absorbed Tau, there were no features at all—no eyes, ears, or
mouth.
But the oddest sight of all were the globes which formed the
body. They were a greyish-white, but semi-transparent. And through
the surface one could sight reddish structural supports which must
have served the creature as bones, as well as organs Dane had no
wish to explore.
“Great space!” Ali exploded. “You can look
right through them!”
He was exaggerating—but not so much. The Limbians—if
this were a Limbian—were far more tenuous than any creature
the Terrans had found before. And Dane was sure that the record
film would show that it was a thing such as this which had passed
the contact point in the other valley.
Ali stepped around the body to examine the scars left by the
blast which had driven the creature into the crevice. He touched a
finger gingerly to a blackened smear on the rock and then held it
close to his nose.
“Blaster right enough.”
“Do you think Rich—?”
Ali gazed down the valley. Like all the others they had yet
sighted it ran from the towering mountains to the blasted plain,
and they could not be too far from the ruins where the
archaeologists had gone to earth.
“But—why?” Dane asked a second question before
his first had been answered.
Had the globe things attacked Rich and his men? Somehow Dane
could not accept that. To his mind the limp body Tau was working
over was pitifully defenceless. It held not the slightest hint of
menace.
“That’s the big question.” Ali tramped on,
past the hollow where lay those other dreadfully contorted bodies,
down to the edge of the stream, which this valley, as did all the
cultivated ones, cradled in its centre, the fields strung out along
it.
Plain to read here was the mark of the invader. No feet had left
that pair of wide ruts crushed deep into the soft ground of the
fields. Dane stopped short.
“Crawler! But our crawlers—”
“Are just where they should be, parked under the Queen or
in their storage compartments,” Ali finished for him.
“And since Rich couldn’t have brought one here in a kit
bag, we must believe that Limbo is not as barren of life as Survey
certified it to be.” He stood at the edge of the stream and
then squatted to study a patch of drying mud. “Track’s
odd though—”
Although his opinion had not been asked, Dane joined the
Engineer-apprentice. The tread mark had left a pattern, clear as
print, for about four inches. He was familiar with the operation of
crawlers as they pertained to his own duties. He could even, if the
need arose, make minor repairs on one. But he couldn’t have
identified any difference in vehicles from their tread patterns.
There he was willing to accept Ali’s superior learning.
Kamil’s next move was a complete mystery to Dane. Still on
his knees he began measuring the distance between the two furrows,
using a small rule from his belt tool kit for a gauge. At last Dane
dared to ask a question:
“What’s wrong?”
For a moment he thought that Ali wasn’t going to
answer.
Then the other sat back on his heels, wiped dust from the rule,
and looked up.
“A standard crawler’s a four-two-eight,” he
stated didactically. “A scooter is a three-seven-eight. A
flamer’s carriage runs five-seven-twelve.”
The actual figures meant very little to Dane, but he knew their
significance. Within the Federation machinery was now completely
standardized. It had to be so that repairs from one world to the
next would be simplified. Ali had recited the measurements of the
three types of ground vehicles in common use on the majority of
Federation planets. Though, by rights, a flamer was a war machine,
used only by the military or Patrol forces, except on pioneer
worlds where its wide heat beam could be turned against rank forest
or jungle growth.
“And this isn’t any of those,” Dane
guessed.
“Right. It’s three-two-four—but it’s
heavy, too. Or else it was transporting close to an over-load. You
don’t get ruts like these from a scooter or crawler
travelling light.” He was an engineer, he should know, Dane
conceded.
“Then what was it?”
Ali shrugged. “Something not standard—low, narrow,
or it couldn’t snake through here, and able to carry a good
load. But nothing on our books is like it.”
It was Dane’s turn to study the cliffs about them.
“Only one way it could go—up—or
down—”
Ali got to bis feet, “I’ll go down,” he
glanced over at the busy Tau engrossed in his grisly task,
“nobody’s going to drag him away from there until he
learns all he can.” He shuddered, perhaps in exaggeration,
perhaps in earnest. “I have a feeling that it isn’t
wise to stay here too long. Any scout will have to be a quick
one—”
Dane turned up stream. “I’ll go up,” he said
firmly, it was not Ali’s place to give orders, they were
equal in rank. He started off, walking between the tracks without
looking back.
He was concentrating so on his determination to prove that he
could think properly for himself that he made a fatal slip,
inexcusable in any Trade explorer. Though he continued to wear his helmet, along with all the other field equipment, he totally
forgot to set his personal com-unit on alert, and so went blindly
off into the unknown with no contact with either of the others.
But at the moment he was far more intent on those tracks which
lured him on, up a gradually narrowing valley towards the mountain
walls. The climbing sun stuck across his path, but there were pools
of purple shadow where the cliffs walled off its rays.
The trail left by the crawler ran as straight as the general
contour of the ground allowed. Two of the lacy winged flying things
they had glimpsed in the other valley skimmed close to the surface
of the stream and then took off high into the chill air.
Now the greenery was sparser. He had not passed a field for some
time. And underfoot the surface of the valley was inclining up in a
gentle slope. The walls curved, so that Dane walked more warily,
having no desire to round a projection and meet a blaster user face
to face.
He was certain in his own mind that Dr. Rich had something to do
with this. But where did this crawler come from? Had the Doctor
been on Limbo before? Or had he broken into some cache of Survey
supplies? But there was Ali’s certainty that the vehicle was
not orthodox.
The trail ended abruptly and in such a manner as to stop Dane
short, staring in unbelief. For those ruts led straight to a solid,
blank wall of rock, vanishing beneath it as if the machine which
had made them had been driven straight through!
There is always, Dane hastily reminded himself, some logical
explanation for the impossible. And not Video ones about
“force walls” and such either. If those tracks went
into the rock, it was an illusion—or an opening—and it
was up to him to discover which.
His boots crunched on sand and gravel until he was in touching
distance of the barrier. It was then that he became aware of
something else, a vibration. It was very silent there in the
cramped pocket which was the end of the valley, no wind blew, no
leaves rustled. And yet there was something unquiet in the air, a
stirring just at the far edge of his sensitiveness to sound and
movement.
On impulse he set the palms of his hands against the stone of
the cliff. And he felt it instantly, running up his arms into his
body until his flesh and bones were only a recorder for that
monstrous beat-beat-beat—relayed to him through the stuff of
Limbo itself. Yet, when he passed his fingers searchingly over the
rough stone, studied each inch of it intently, he could see no
break in its surface, no sign of a door, no reason for that heavy
thump, thump which shook his nerves. The vibration was unpleasant,
almost menacing. He snatched his hands away, suddenly afraid of
being trapped in that dull rhythm. But now he was sure that Limbo
was not what it seemed— a lifeless, dead world.
For the first time he remembered that he should have maintained
contact with the others, and hurriedly turned the key on his
com-unit. Instantly Tau’s voice rang thinly in his ears.
“Calling Ali—calling Thorson—come
in—come in!” There was an urgency in the Medic’s
voice which brought Dane away from the wall, set him on the back
trail even as he replied:
“Thorson here. Am at end of valley. Wish to
report—”
But the other cut into that impatiently. “Return to
flitter! Ali, Thorson, return to flitter!”
“Thorson returning.” Dane started at the best pace
he could muster down the valley. But as he trotted, slipping and
sliding on the loose stones and gravel, Tau’s voice continued
to call Ali. And from the engineer-apprentice there came no answer
at all.
Breathing hard, Dane reached the place where they had left the
Medic. As he came into sight Tau waved him to the side of the
flitter.
“Where’s Ali?” “Where’s
Kamil?” Their demands came together and they stared at each
other.
Dane answered first. “He said he was going down
stream—to follow the crawler tracks we found. I went
upstream—”
“Then it must have been he who—” Tau was
frowning. He turned on his heel and studied the valley leading to
the plains. The presence of water had encouraged a thicker growth
of brush there and it presented a wall except for where the stream
cut a passage.
“But what happened?” Dane wanted to know.
“I got a call on com—it was cut off almost
immediately—”
“Not mine, I was off circuit,” returned Dane before
he thought. It was only then that he realized what he had done. No
one on field duty goes off circuit out on scout, that was a rule
even a First Circler in the Pool had by heart. And he had done it
the first time he was on duty! He could feel the heat spreading up
into his cheeks. But he offered no explanations nor excuses. The
fault was his and he would have to stand up to the
consequences.
“Ali must be in trouble,” Tau made no other comment
as he climbed in behind the controls of the flitter, a very quiet
Dane following him.
They arose jerkily, with none of the smooth perfection
Ali’s piloting had supplied. But once in the air Tau pointed
the nose of the flitter down valley, cutting speed to just enough
to keep them airborne. They watched the ground below. But there was
nothing to see but the marks of blaster fire and beyond undisturbed
green broken by bare patches of gravel and jutting rock.
They could also sight the crawler tracks and Dane related the
information he had. Tau’s countenance was sober.
“If we don’t find Ali, we must report to the
Queen—”
That was only common sense, Dane knew, but he dreaded having to
admit his own negligence. And perhaps his act was worse than just
carelessness in not using the com-unit, perhaps he should have
insisted on their sticking together, deserted though the valley
appeared to be.
“We’re up against something nasty here,” Tau
continued. “Whoever used those blasters was outside the
law—”
The Federation law dealing with X-Tees was severe, as Dane well
knew. Parts of the code, stripped of the legal verbiage, had to be
memorized at the Pool. You could defend yourself against the attack
of aliens, but on no provocation, except in defence of his life,
could a Trader use a blaster or other weapon against an X-Tee. Even
sleep rays were frowned upon, though most Traders packed them when
going into unknown territory among primitive tribes.
The men of the Queen had landed unarmed on Limbo, and they would continue unarmed until such a time as the situation
was so grave that either their lives or the ship was in danger. But
in this valley a blaster had been used in the wanton indulgence of
someone’s sadistic hatred for the globe creatures.
“They weren’t attacking—those globe things, I
mean?”
Tau’s brown face was grim as he shook his head.
“They had no weapons at all. I’d say from the evidence
that they were attacked without warning, just mown down. Maybe for
the fun of it!”
And that projected such a picture of horror that Tau,
conditioned by life under the Trade Creed, stopped short.
Below them the valley began to widen out, cutting in a fan shape
into the plain. There was no sign of Ali anywhere on that fan. He
had vanished as if he had stepped through the cliff wall. The
cliff! Dane, remembering the end of the crawler trail, pressed
against the windshield to inspect those walls. But there were no
tracks ending before them.
The flitter lost altitude as Tau concentrated on landing.
“We must report to the Queen,” he said as he set them
down. Not leaving his seat he reached for the long-range beam
mike.