They were being herded east, back toward the
area where they had seen the monstrous thing. And to be caught in
there—! Yet there was no possible way to defeat a force
field.
Defeat a force field! The brachs had gotten through the weak
field intended to restrain the dragons. But that was a
weak field. This, judging by that haze, was a major lay-on
of power. The only way would be to turn it off at its source. And
since the source must be on the other side of the wall, they might
as well give that idea up. Yet Dane kept remembering the brachs had
broken that other field, seemingly only by wishing.
The three gave ground very reluctantly before the relentless, if
slow, push of the haze. Now they halted, and they stood under one
of the trees.
“No alarms, eh?” Dane could not resist saying that.
“They didn’t have to have alarms. We just triggered a
trap. That may be set on automatics so they don’t have to
worry about unexpected and uninvited visitors. Just let them be
bagged and collect them later.”
“If they collect them at all,” Tau added. And the
suggestion behind that was chilling, especially as they suspected
they now shared the roaming area of that thing.
The brach squirmed in Dane’s hold as if he found the
Terran’s arm about him imprisoning. His head wriggled free
and pointed in the direction of the haze glowing faintly in the
dark. It would not do any harm, Dane decided, to find out if the
brach possibly could get through that. He relayed to the other that
thought.
“The dragon screen was weak,” Tau answered.
“But this is full strength.”
“They got in and let the dragons out—” Meshler
seized upon the optimistic side. “You think he might be able to
do that for us? Come on then—!”
He caught at Dane’s shoulder and gave him a push toward
the force shield.
Dane spoke into the translator. “This thing, it is strong,
but it is like that which was about the cage. Can you make a hole
in it to let us through?”
The brach broke from Dane’s hold and went to the haze,
walking hesitatingly, his nose up and outstretched, as if he meant
to tear through with his horn. But he halted with a good space
between that horn and the mist of the barrier. Then began a slow
swing of his head back and forth. He might have been measuring off
the space through which to cut a door. But, as he squatted down on
his haunches, the verdict piped out of Dane’s mike.
“This is strong, very strong. Can maybe make small place
for self—take much effort to do that. But you are too big,
and cannot hold any space for long.”
Dane repeated that to the others.
“So,” Meshler said “it—he—can get
out, but not us.”
“There is another way,” Dane suggested. “If he
can get out, shut off the field broadcast—”
“A very long chance.” Meshler sounded as if he did
not believe in the success of that.
“Not too—” Tau dropped to one knee, the faint
radiance of the haze making of him a silhouette. “This is a
general broadcast field. The energy may be stepped up, but it is
not complicated. If the brach can get through—Dane”—he turned to the younger Terran—“is
there any way to make him understand what to hunt for and what he
must do if he finds it?”
“If I had a light, something to draw on—”
Tau looked to Meshler. “Anything in that bag of yours to
help?”
“There’s a belt beamer. For the rest—”
The ranger shook his head.
Dane knelt beside Tau, running his hands across the ground until
one of his fingers stubbed painfully on a small stick. He pulled it
out of the soil, and it came easily, so he was aware that the
ground here was not iron-hard with frost.
“There is a thing”—he spoke now to the
brach—“which can be done for us all.”
The alien swung around, crouching between Dane and Tau. Using
his glove, Dane smoothed a bit of ground. Meshler had been
rummaging in the pack. Now he produced a small belt beamer. Laying
it by Dane’s hand, he unsealed and stripped off his outer
tunic, holding this as a shield behind which they could use the
light. Dane sat trying to remember force field controls. As Tau had
pointed out, those were alike and the off and on switches
relatively simple.
“Somewhere—not too far—” Dane began,
speaking slowly and with all the distinctness he could muster,
“there is a box. It will look thus.” With care he used
the stick to outline a force field control. “On its top are
three projections, so.” He added those to the sketch.
“One will be turned up—thus—” He drew a
short line from one dot. “The other two down, in this manner.
The one that is up”—he paused to blot out the first
lines and redraw them—“must be made to come down, the
other two to go up. This will open the wall for us. I do not know
where this box is. Perhaps you can find it, and it may be guarded
by men. But it is our only hope of freedom. Do you
understand?”
“Understand. But do you?” The brach’s meaning
was obscure. Perhaps he guessed that, for now he continued with the
same desire to impress as Dane had used.
“I do this—you free. What you do then for
me—for mine?”
A bargain! Dane was startled. He had forgotten that the brachs
were cargo, that they really had no reason to join the crew. Come
to think of it, they had not even asked the brach if he wanted to
help them. They had used his particular talents as they would those
of an animal as he had once been considered.
Dane explained to Tau and Meshler. The medic spoke.
“But,
of course. Why should we think he would automatically go on running
into danger for us?”
“He freed us in that camp,” cut in Meshler.
“If he didn’t want to help us, then why
that?”
“We were something he needed.” Dane thought he had
the answer. “He wanted our protection in the
wilderness.”
“Then he’ll need it now.”
Meshler seized upon that triumphantly. “We’re all in
this together.”
“The conditions,” Tau pointed out, “are not
quite the same. That was wilderness. There must be some kind of a
camp or settlement near here. He doesn’t need us as much as
we need him now.”
“What do you want?” Paying no attention to his
companions, Dane came to the point with the brach.
“No cage—be free with own—” the alien
replied promptly
The brachs were still cargo. Dane had no right to make such a
decision. But neither were intelligent beings classed as
cargo—they were passengers, whether the authorities agreed or
not. And passengers, providing they had committed no crime on board
the Queen, were free to go. Only he had no authority and
could not make a bargain—nor give empty promises. There was
expediency in trade to be sure, but there were limits past which
one did not go, and the most fragile of these dealt with contacts
with X-Tee races. He would stake his whole future career on any
decision he made now. Perhaps Meshler did not realize that, but
Dane thought Tau would when he passed along the brach’s
request.
“If he’s intelligent,” Meshler snapped,
“then he had no business in a cage. Tell him
‘yes’ and let him get us out of this
cage!”
But was it that simple? Suppose Dane said “yes” and
the legalities of trade later said “no”? The brachs
were cargo, undischarged cargo. They had a consigner on Xecho, a
consignee waiting at the port. And would those tamely accept such a
bargain?
“What are you waiting for?” Meshler demanded even
more sharply. “If this alien can find the controls and shut
off the field, he’d better get at it. Do you realize what may
be in here with us?”
But Dane was not going to be pushed into what might seem
betrayal in the future. He was stubborn on that point.
“I would say go free”—he tried to choose his
words with care, to make certain the brach
understood—“but there are those greater than I who can
say I am wrong. I cannot promise they will not do that.”
Tau had switched off the beamer once the drawing had been
studied, and Meshler was pulling on his jacket. Dane could not see the brach, only that its nose pointed in his
direction. Then came the alien’s answer.
“You feel for us. Will you speak for us?”
“I will. So will all of the ship.”
“More is needed.”
“I cannot promise freedom that another may say no
to. That would be a wrong thing. But I shall speak for
you.”
“Then there shall be done what can be. If this box can be
found—”
The brach went to the haze, nosing around for several paces,
almost as if he were sniffing for some weak spot. Then he halted,
his head down, and he stood very still. Tau gave a small
exclamation and caught at Dane’s arm to draw his attention.
On the dimly lighted dial of the detect, the needle was moving,
picking up speed until it was a blur. Meshler’s half-choked
cry brought their eyes back to the barrier.
To Dane’s sight there was no thinning of the haze, yet the
brach was already halfway through and a second or two later stood
on the other side. He turned to look back as if to reassure them
and then trotted away in the direction they had been going when the
field trapped them.
“We stay by the perimeter,” Meshler advised,
“but get this as a screen around us.” He nodded to the
brush.
What more he might have added was never to be heard, for there
was a shrill tearing of the night by noise, such a shriek of
insanity as Dane had never heard, sending his hands to his ears,
his shoulders hunching as if that sound were a lash laid across his
body.
A second shriek and Dane saw against the faint light of the haze
that he was not the only one cowering from that outbreak of audio
violence.
“What—what was that?” Surely as a ranger,
Meshler must know the source.
“Nothing that I know.” The ranger’s voice was
that of a badly shaken man.
“The force field is not only a trap”—Tau gave
them grim understanding of what might face them
now—“but it is also probably a cage. And I don’t
think I care to meet what we share it with.”
It would be far better, Dane decided in that instant, that the
owners of this trap come and take them out as prisoners. They dared not get too far away from the barrier. If the brach
was successful, they must be ready to make swift use of freedom.
But what they were entrapped with—whatever prowled
here—must also be faced. And they had no weapons.
“Fire—a torch—” That was Tau. Dane heard
a crackling and saw a piece of well-leafed bush sway violently and
then separate from the trunk as the medic broke it loose.
“Do you have a striker?” Tau asked Meshler.
“Green stuff—may not burn,” the ranger
returned. But once more he delved into the pack. “Hold it
away from you—well away—”
What he did Dane could not see, but at last Meshler seemed
satisfied.
“That’s wet down with proto fuel. One spark and it
will give you fire all right. You are right in believing that fire
will hold off most beasts. Only we aren’t sure what roams
here. Light—the beamer—might have some effect
also.”
“The brach went that way,” Dane said. “If we
follow it along within the haze—”
“As good a way as any,” Meshler agreed.
However, they did keep behind the screen of brush, and they went
slowly and carefully. There had been no second outburst of the
hideous screaming, yet Dane expected at any moment to confront some
horror out of the night.
In a very short time the road made by the crawler treads swung
away from the haze again. And they lingered at that point, not
wanting to venture far from the one tie with freedom. Tau broke the
silence first.
“Any camp must be over there—”
Dane saw the dark blot of Tau’s arm against the haze. The
medic was pointing along the curve of the road.
“Source of radiation that way.”
“What I don’t understand,” Dane said slowly,
“is how an establishment of this sort can exist and the
government know nothing about it.”
He expected some comment, probably an impatient one, from
Meshler. When the ranger said nothing, suspicion was bom.
“You do know something!” Tau put Dane’s
thought into words. “Is this a government project then? And
if so—”
“Yes, if so, you ought to be able to get us
out!”
Meshler shifted weight from one foot to the other. They could
not see his expression, but there was something about his silence
that fed Dane’s uneasiness.
“We’re waiting,” Tau said.
Tau, Tau ought to be able to get to the truth! The medic’s
interests lay in the field of native “magic,” which
was, many times, thought control. He had consorted with the
esper-endowed (and charlatans who were able to deceive even the
astute) on many worlds. On Khatka he had unleashed his own
illusions to defeat a man who believed implicitly in his own
witching powers. Dane had no explanation for what he had seen Tau
do to save him and Captain Jellico—and perhaps the whole
world—for Limbulo had been trying to snatch rule there.
Here the medic had no artificial aids for getting the truth out
of Meshler. What he must or could do would be out of his own stock
of learning. Tau could make Meshler talk if anyone on the
Queen could.
“This territory’s off limits.” It seemed that
Meshler would not need drastic persuasion.
“But you brought us here,” Tau pointed out.
“By orders?”
“No!” Meshler’s denial was quick and emphatic.
“It’s the truth that I told you. We could not have
gotten out on foot. This is the only way to survive, to try and
find the experimental station.”
“The Trosti station?”
But that, according to Meshler’s own former statement, was
northwest from here. Dane left the questioning wholly to Tau.
“Their secondary station, not the main one. It is a top
priority secret. We only know it exists, not where it
is—”
“Nor what they are doing there,” Tau commented.
“Could it be you used our dragon hunt for a chance to do some
snooping? If so, by whose orders?”
“The Council is supposed to know, but my own
department—we felt—”
“That you ought to be in on any secrets, too? I
wonder,” Tau said speculatively, “if this is more than
just interdepartmental jealousy. No wonder there was trouble after
we landed. Someone—someone important—expected us to be
carrying what we dumped in the LB. Was that it?”
“I don’t know.” Meshler’s voice was
harsh. He might have been thinking furiously and didn’t want to share his
thoughts, or he might be truly baffled.
“What about that hunting party? And our flitter was
beam-locked—or was it?”
“Yes! And I don’t know any more about those hunters
than you do.” There was heat and energy in this burst.
“I only know this is a top-security region.”
“Yet you allowed us to send off the brach to cut out the
force control, if he could,” Tau persisted. “Which
means one of two things: either you knew he would fail and you were
buying time, or you have good suspicions about this—”
But the medic was never to complete that sentence. There was a
crashing in the bush behind them and with it the same stench as
that which had gagged them before. It was very apparent that the
thing they had seen only momentarily was on the prowl and headed in
their direction, though whether it could be definitely hunting
them—
“Back!” Meshler’s hand caught Dane’s arm
and pulled him along. “Come on!”
Once more they must depend upon the ranger’s night sight,
though to the left the haze gave off its glow. They made the best
pace they could, only it was away from the road.
Dane held up his other arm to keep the whip of tough branches
out of his face and eyes. They had already ripped at his thermo
jacket and drawn blood from a thorn tear on one cheek. Then they
came out of that thick growth into an open space where the moon
gave them light, and the ground beneath them was smooth enough to
run on.
“To the right!” That was Meshler’s order. Dane
obeyed, but only because he had seen it, too, something black and
tall standing well above the ground. Plainly it was not growth but
a sturdily based platform. Behind them, so close it assaulted their
ears to deafen them, came that horrible screeching.
Meshler reached the nearest support leg of the erection, leaped
up, and got a good grip on some projection Dane could not see. He
climbed with speed and then something thumped down with force,
which might have pinned Dane to the ground had it been inches
closer. Tau caught at it.
“Ladder!” He gasped out the
single word, already making use of its aid. Dane was right on his
heels. Then the medic was up and over the edge of the platform, Dane not long in
wriggling after. A push sent him rolling to one side as the ranger
grabbed the ladder, jerking it aloft.
Dane, still lying flat, wormed his way to the edge to watch for
what might exit into the thin moonlight on their trail. It came, a
hunched shape moving as a black blot. It was hard to gauge its bulk
from their perch, but that it was several times his own size Dane
would swear. Though it had exited from cover on four feet, it rose
a little to shuffle on two, the forelimbs dangling loosely as it
came.
The thing did not raise its head far enough for Dane to make out
anything but a dark blob, and he was just as well pleased that this
was so, for the very outlines suggested that it was a nightmare
creature, while the stench of it made him sick.
Now and then it went to fours again, and he thought it did not
hunt by sight but rather by scent, and it was nosing them out.
Finally it came to the standards below the platform. If it could
climb, how could they fight it off? Even though he had not been
able to assess its natural weapons, there was that about it that
suggested even to an armed man that it would prove a formidable
opponent. Meshler had been able to climb without the ladder. Could
it?
An appalling shriek broke from immediately under them, and the
platform itself quivered—not from the sound, but because some
heavy force beat at one of its supports. Dane dared not lean over
far enough to see what was going on below, but it felt as if the
creature was working to either pull down or push over the nearest
pillar-leg of the four supporting their perch. The blows or jerks
were enough to set it shuddering and swinging.
Thud-jerk-thud! The creature persisted. How long before that
would pay off and the platform would collapse, taking them with it?
They were cornered up here. Yet the move to climb had seemed the
best escape.
“Look!” Tau’s hand on him pulled Dane around a
little. The medic was lying flat, too, as if he thought they had a
better chance of not being shaken loose that way.
Look? Where? At what? Patrol men descending via grav belts to
their rescue? This venture had already taken on so many of the
incredible elements of a tridee show that Dane could expect that traditional ending to extreme danger to be a
part of it.
But what he did see was a green-white glowing spot at or near
where the monster had earlier emerged.
They were being herded east, back toward the
area where they had seen the monstrous thing. And to be caught in
there—! Yet there was no possible way to defeat a force
field.
Defeat a force field! The brachs had gotten through the weak
field intended to restrain the dragons. But that was a
weak field. This, judging by that haze, was a major lay-on
of power. The only way would be to turn it off at its source. And
since the source must be on the other side of the wall, they might
as well give that idea up. Yet Dane kept remembering the brachs had
broken that other field, seemingly only by wishing.
The three gave ground very reluctantly before the relentless, if
slow, push of the haze. Now they halted, and they stood under one
of the trees.
“No alarms, eh?” Dane could not resist saying that.
“They didn’t have to have alarms. We just triggered a
trap. That may be set on automatics so they don’t have to
worry about unexpected and uninvited visitors. Just let them be
bagged and collect them later.”
“If they collect them at all,” Tau added. And the
suggestion behind that was chilling, especially as they suspected
they now shared the roaming area of that thing.
The brach squirmed in Dane’s hold as if he found the
Terran’s arm about him imprisoning. His head wriggled free
and pointed in the direction of the haze glowing faintly in the
dark. It would not do any harm, Dane decided, to find out if the
brach possibly could get through that. He relayed to the other that
thought.
“The dragon screen was weak,” Tau answered.
“But this is full strength.”
“They got in and let the dragons out—” Meshler
seized upon the optimistic side. “You think he might be able to
do that for us? Come on then—!”
He caught at Dane’s shoulder and gave him a push toward
the force shield.
Dane spoke into the translator. “This thing, it is strong,
but it is like that which was about the cage. Can you make a hole
in it to let us through?”
The brach broke from Dane’s hold and went to the haze,
walking hesitatingly, his nose up and outstretched, as if he meant
to tear through with his horn. But he halted with a good space
between that horn and the mist of the barrier. Then began a slow
swing of his head back and forth. He might have been measuring off
the space through which to cut a door. But, as he squatted down on
his haunches, the verdict piped out of Dane’s mike.
“This is strong, very strong. Can maybe make small place
for self—take much effort to do that. But you are too big,
and cannot hold any space for long.”
Dane repeated that to the others.
“So,” Meshler said “it—he—can get
out, but not us.”
“There is another way,” Dane suggested. “If he
can get out, shut off the field broadcast—”
“A very long chance.” Meshler sounded as if he did
not believe in the success of that.
“Not too—” Tau dropped to one knee, the faint
radiance of the haze making of him a silhouette. “This is a
general broadcast field. The energy may be stepped up, but it is
not complicated. If the brach can get through—Dane”—he turned to the younger Terran—“is
there any way to make him understand what to hunt for and what he
must do if he finds it?”
“If I had a light, something to draw on—”
Tau looked to Meshler. “Anything in that bag of yours to
help?”
“There’s a belt beamer. For the rest—”
The ranger shook his head.
Dane knelt beside Tau, running his hands across the ground until
one of his fingers stubbed painfully on a small stick. He pulled it
out of the soil, and it came easily, so he was aware that the
ground here was not iron-hard with frost.
“There is a thing”—he spoke now to the
brach—“which can be done for us all.”
The alien swung around, crouching between Dane and Tau. Using
his glove, Dane smoothed a bit of ground. Meshler had been
rummaging in the pack. Now he produced a small belt beamer. Laying
it by Dane’s hand, he unsealed and stripped off his outer
tunic, holding this as a shield behind which they could use the
light. Dane sat trying to remember force field controls. As Tau had
pointed out, those were alike and the off and on switches
relatively simple.
“Somewhere—not too far—” Dane began,
speaking slowly and with all the distinctness he could muster,
“there is a box. It will look thus.” With care he used
the stick to outline a force field control. “On its top are
three projections, so.” He added those to the sketch.
“One will be turned up—thus—” He drew a
short line from one dot. “The other two down, in this manner.
The one that is up”—he paused to blot out the first
lines and redraw them—“must be made to come down, the
other two to go up. This will open the wall for us. I do not know
where this box is. Perhaps you can find it, and it may be guarded
by men. But it is our only hope of freedom. Do you
understand?”
“Understand. But do you?” The brach’s meaning
was obscure. Perhaps he guessed that, for now he continued with the
same desire to impress as Dane had used.
“I do this—you free. What you do then for
me—for mine?”
A bargain! Dane was startled. He had forgotten that the brachs
were cargo, that they really had no reason to join the crew. Come
to think of it, they had not even asked the brach if he wanted to
help them. They had used his particular talents as they would those
of an animal as he had once been considered.
Dane explained to Tau and Meshler. The medic spoke.
“But,
of course. Why should we think he would automatically go on running
into danger for us?”
“He freed us in that camp,” cut in Meshler.
“If he didn’t want to help us, then why
that?”
“We were something he needed.” Dane thought he had
the answer. “He wanted our protection in the
wilderness.”
“Then he’ll need it now.”
Meshler seized upon that triumphantly. “We’re all in
this together.”
“The conditions,” Tau pointed out, “are not
quite the same. That was wilderness. There must be some kind of a
camp or settlement near here. He doesn’t need us as much as
we need him now.”
“What do you want?” Paying no attention to his
companions, Dane came to the point with the brach.
“No cage—be free with own—” the alien
replied promptly
The brachs were still cargo. Dane had no right to make such a
decision. But neither were intelligent beings classed as
cargo—they were passengers, whether the authorities agreed or
not. And passengers, providing they had committed no crime on board
the Queen, were free to go. Only he had no authority and
could not make a bargain—nor give empty promises. There was
expediency in trade to be sure, but there were limits past which
one did not go, and the most fragile of these dealt with contacts
with X-Tee races. He would stake his whole future career on any
decision he made now. Perhaps Meshler did not realize that, but
Dane thought Tau would when he passed along the brach’s
request.
“If he’s intelligent,” Meshler snapped,
“then he had no business in a cage. Tell him
‘yes’ and let him get us out of this
cage!”
But was it that simple? Suppose Dane said “yes” and
the legalities of trade later said “no”? The brachs
were cargo, undischarged cargo. They had a consigner on Xecho, a
consignee waiting at the port. And would those tamely accept such a
bargain?
“What are you waiting for?” Meshler demanded even
more sharply. “If this alien can find the controls and shut
off the field, he’d better get at it. Do you realize what may
be in here with us?”
But Dane was not going to be pushed into what might seem
betrayal in the future. He was stubborn on that point.
“I would say go free”—he tried to choose his
words with care, to make certain the brach
understood—“but there are those greater than I who can
say I am wrong. I cannot promise they will not do that.”
Tau had switched off the beamer once the drawing had been
studied, and Meshler was pulling on his jacket. Dane could not see the brach, only that its nose pointed in his
direction. Then came the alien’s answer.
“You feel for us. Will you speak for us?”
“I will. So will all of the ship.”
“More is needed.”
“I cannot promise freedom that another may say no
to. That would be a wrong thing. But I shall speak for
you.”
“Then there shall be done what can be. If this box can be
found—”
The brach went to the haze, nosing around for several paces,
almost as if he were sniffing for some weak spot. Then he halted,
his head down, and he stood very still. Tau gave a small
exclamation and caught at Dane’s arm to draw his attention.
On the dimly lighted dial of the detect, the needle was moving,
picking up speed until it was a blur. Meshler’s half-choked
cry brought their eyes back to the barrier.
To Dane’s sight there was no thinning of the haze, yet the
brach was already halfway through and a second or two later stood
on the other side. He turned to look back as if to reassure them
and then trotted away in the direction they had been going when the
field trapped them.
“We stay by the perimeter,” Meshler advised,
“but get this as a screen around us.” He nodded to the
brush.
What more he might have added was never to be heard, for there
was a shrill tearing of the night by noise, such a shriek of
insanity as Dane had never heard, sending his hands to his ears,
his shoulders hunching as if that sound were a lash laid across his
body.
A second shriek and Dane saw against the faint light of the haze
that he was not the only one cowering from that outbreak of audio
violence.
“What—what was that?” Surely as a ranger,
Meshler must know the source.
“Nothing that I know.” The ranger’s voice was
that of a badly shaken man.
“The force field is not only a trap”—Tau gave
them grim understanding of what might face them
now—“but it is also probably a cage. And I don’t
think I care to meet what we share it with.”
It would be far better, Dane decided in that instant, that the
owners of this trap come and take them out as prisoners. They dared not get too far away from the barrier. If the brach
was successful, they must be ready to make swift use of freedom.
But what they were entrapped with—whatever prowled
here—must also be faced. And they had no weapons.
“Fire—a torch—” That was Tau. Dane heard
a crackling and saw a piece of well-leafed bush sway violently and
then separate from the trunk as the medic broke it loose.
“Do you have a striker?” Tau asked Meshler.
“Green stuff—may not burn,” the ranger
returned. But once more he delved into the pack. “Hold it
away from you—well away—”
What he did Dane could not see, but at last Meshler seemed
satisfied.
“That’s wet down with proto fuel. One spark and it
will give you fire all right. You are right in believing that fire
will hold off most beasts. Only we aren’t sure what roams
here. Light—the beamer—might have some effect
also.”
“The brach went that way,” Dane said. “If we
follow it along within the haze—”
“As good a way as any,” Meshler agreed.
However, they did keep behind the screen of brush, and they went
slowly and carefully. There had been no second outburst of the
hideous screaming, yet Dane expected at any moment to confront some
horror out of the night.
In a very short time the road made by the crawler treads swung
away from the haze again. And they lingered at that point, not
wanting to venture far from the one tie with freedom. Tau broke the
silence first.
“Any camp must be over there—”
Dane saw the dark blot of Tau’s arm against the haze. The
medic was pointing along the curve of the road.
“Source of radiation that way.”
“What I don’t understand,” Dane said slowly,
“is how an establishment of this sort can exist and the
government know nothing about it.”
He expected some comment, probably an impatient one, from
Meshler. When the ranger said nothing, suspicion was bom.
“You do know something!” Tau put Dane’s
thought into words. “Is this a government project then? And
if so—”
“Yes, if so, you ought to be able to get us
out!”
Meshler shifted weight from one foot to the other. They could
not see his expression, but there was something about his silence
that fed Dane’s uneasiness.
“We’re waiting,” Tau said.
Tau, Tau ought to be able to get to the truth! The medic’s
interests lay in the field of native “magic,” which
was, many times, thought control. He had consorted with the
esper-endowed (and charlatans who were able to deceive even the
astute) on many worlds. On Khatka he had unleashed his own
illusions to defeat a man who believed implicitly in his own
witching powers. Dane had no explanation for what he had seen Tau
do to save him and Captain Jellico—and perhaps the whole
world—for Limbulo had been trying to snatch rule there.
Here the medic had no artificial aids for getting the truth out
of Meshler. What he must or could do would be out of his own stock
of learning. Tau could make Meshler talk if anyone on the
Queen could.
“This territory’s off limits.” It seemed that
Meshler would not need drastic persuasion.
“But you brought us here,” Tau pointed out.
“By orders?”
“No!” Meshler’s denial was quick and emphatic.
“It’s the truth that I told you. We could not have
gotten out on foot. This is the only way to survive, to try and
find the experimental station.”
“The Trosti station?”
But that, according to Meshler’s own former statement, was
northwest from here. Dane left the questioning wholly to Tau.
“Their secondary station, not the main one. It is a top
priority secret. We only know it exists, not where it
is—”
“Nor what they are doing there,” Tau commented.
“Could it be you used our dragon hunt for a chance to do some
snooping? If so, by whose orders?”
“The Council is supposed to know, but my own
department—we felt—”
“That you ought to be in on any secrets, too? I
wonder,” Tau said speculatively, “if this is more than
just interdepartmental jealousy. No wonder there was trouble after
we landed. Someone—someone important—expected us to be
carrying what we dumped in the LB. Was that it?”
“I don’t know.” Meshler’s voice was
harsh. He might have been thinking furiously and didn’t want to share his
thoughts, or he might be truly baffled.
“What about that hunting party? And our flitter was
beam-locked—or was it?”
“Yes! And I don’t know any more about those hunters
than you do.” There was heat and energy in this burst.
“I only know this is a top-security region.”
“Yet you allowed us to send off the brach to cut out the
force control, if he could,” Tau persisted. “Which
means one of two things: either you knew he would fail and you were
buying time, or you have good suspicions about this—”
But the medic was never to complete that sentence. There was a
crashing in the bush behind them and with it the same stench as
that which had gagged them before. It was very apparent that the
thing they had seen only momentarily was on the prowl and headed in
their direction, though whether it could be definitely hunting
them—
“Back!” Meshler’s hand caught Dane’s arm
and pulled him along. “Come on!”
Once more they must depend upon the ranger’s night sight,
though to the left the haze gave off its glow. They made the best
pace they could, only it was away from the road.
Dane held up his other arm to keep the whip of tough branches
out of his face and eyes. They had already ripped at his thermo
jacket and drawn blood from a thorn tear on one cheek. Then they
came out of that thick growth into an open space where the moon
gave them light, and the ground beneath them was smooth enough to
run on.
“To the right!” That was Meshler’s order. Dane
obeyed, but only because he had seen it, too, something black and
tall standing well above the ground. Plainly it was not growth but
a sturdily based platform. Behind them, so close it assaulted their
ears to deafen them, came that horrible screeching.
Meshler reached the nearest support leg of the erection, leaped
up, and got a good grip on some projection Dane could not see. He
climbed with speed and then something thumped down with force,
which might have pinned Dane to the ground had it been inches
closer. Tau caught at it.
“Ladder!” He gasped out the
single word, already making use of its aid. Dane was right on his
heels. Then the medic was up and over the edge of the platform, Dane not long in
wriggling after. A push sent him rolling to one side as the ranger
grabbed the ladder, jerking it aloft.
Dane, still lying flat, wormed his way to the edge to watch for
what might exit into the thin moonlight on their trail. It came, a
hunched shape moving as a black blot. It was hard to gauge its bulk
from their perch, but that it was several times his own size Dane
would swear. Though it had exited from cover on four feet, it rose
a little to shuffle on two, the forelimbs dangling loosely as it
came.
The thing did not raise its head far enough for Dane to make out
anything but a dark blob, and he was just as well pleased that this
was so, for the very outlines suggested that it was a nightmare
creature, while the stench of it made him sick.
Now and then it went to fours again, and he thought it did not
hunt by sight but rather by scent, and it was nosing them out.
Finally it came to the standards below the platform. If it could
climb, how could they fight it off? Even though he had not been
able to assess its natural weapons, there was that about it that
suggested even to an armed man that it would prove a formidable
opponent. Meshler had been able to climb without the ladder. Could
it?
An appalling shriek broke from immediately under them, and the
platform itself quivered—not from the sound, but because some
heavy force beat at one of its supports. Dane dared not lean over
far enough to see what was going on below, but it felt as if the
creature was working to either pull down or push over the nearest
pillar-leg of the four supporting their perch. The blows or jerks
were enough to set it shuddering and swinging.
Thud-jerk-thud! The creature persisted. How long before that
would pay off and the platform would collapse, taking them with it?
They were cornered up here. Yet the move to climb had seemed the
best escape.
“Look!” Tau’s hand on him pulled Dane around a
little. The medic was lying flat, too, as if he thought they had a
better chance of not being shaken loose that way.
Look? Where? At what? Patrol men descending via grav belts to
their rescue? This venture had already taken on so many of the
incredible elements of a tridee show that Dane could expect that traditional ending to extreme danger to be a
part of it.
But what he did see was a green-white glowing spot at or near
where the monster had earlier emerged.