“Rise and orbit!”
Dane was jarred out of sleep, his hammock oscillating from a
hearty push Rip must have delivered, for Shannon still had a hand
raised as if to shove again if his first assault was not effective.
Dane sat up groggily. For a second or two he was not oriented. This
was not his cabin on the Queen.
Beyond Rip, as he was able to focus better, he saw Ali wearing a
thermo jacket, already at the hatch as if impatiently awaiting
him.
“What’s the—?”
“We may have trouble,” Ali answered.
“See?”
He pointed. Ali had made certain safeguard arrangements when
they had completed their two caches—that of the box and that
of the embryos. He had set small ray warns on each so that any
disturbance would be recorded on an improvised pickup, and now one
was blinking red with warning enough to shake Dane fully out of
sleep.
“Which one?” With their present luck it would be the
box, of course. He swung stiffly out of the hammock and reached for
his own thermo wear.
But Ali surprised him. “The embryos. Fire rockets,
can’t you—this is a speed job!”
They came out into the early morning and a crisp chill, which
made Dane pull up his hood with its visored face plate and tuck his
hands into the gloves, which dangled at the ends of his sleeves,
but he remembered to make fast the hatch, ensuring that the brachs
were safe in the warm cabin.
There was a rime of frost on twigs and leaves, giving a silvery
coating to the vegetation, and their breath formed small white
clouds.
“Listen!” Rip threw up his hand as if to bar them
from entering the path they had made yesterday when dragging the
containers to the cache.
They heard a crackling, as if something large forced its way
through the brush. There was another noise, a kind of snort
sounding now and then, and from that they judged that whatever
might be sniffing around was no small creature.
Dane drew his stunner, thumbed its controls to full force, and
saw that his companions were doing the same. The growth hid
whatever crunched along, and they could only trace it by sound. But
by the sound it was going away, not coming toward them. They stood
listening for several minutes until they were sure the unknown had
retreated farther into the wood.
That it had been nosing about the embryos’ cache Dane was
sure. Perhaps there was some scent that attracted it. They had best
see how much damage it had done. The lathsmers were useless to the settlers—that was
positive—but no cargo could be destroyed until ordered, and
Dane did not have that order. Therefore, he must protect the boxes
until he did.
They had not gone far along the tracks left by their journey of
the day before when they came to the signs left by the other thing.
It had tramped, or rather stomped. There were prints breaking the
frozen crust of the ground, large enough so that when Dane knelt to
measure his hand beside them, the marks spread beyond the stretch
of his fingers. They were not very plain, for the frostbound soil
had resisted even this heavy weight. They were more like rounded
holes than anything else.
A stunner set on high would take care of most creatures, but
there were on some worlds menaces with nervous systems on which
such a ray would have no more effect than the flick of a twig. Then
a blaster was the only answer, but those they did not have.
So now they went slowly, listening, relying on the fact the
crashing was faint and the unknown was still going from them. When
they came to where they had hidden the containers, they had more
proof of the strength of what they had not yet seen, for the stones
and earth they had piled with such backbreaking effort to hide the
cache had been pulled away. The containers themselves had been
battered and broken, though they had been made to withstand all the
shocks and strains that might occur during space flight. They were
twisted and rent, and two had been opened as if they had been as
easy to handle as an E-ration tube.
And as an E-ration tube would have been by a hungry man, they
had been completely emptied. Dane kicked one out of the way to see
a third that had been bent and then left. He had not been mistaken.
What had rested so cushioned inside was stirring. But it was not
time for it to be decanted yet! As with the brachs, its
“birth” was coming ahead of schedule.
He could see the writhing of the monster body inside. A few more
minutes and it could certainly die. Since it was a monster, let it.
Only his sense of duty objected. Cargo intact—that was what
it said. And perhaps it would be proof of their own innocence to
keep these embryos intact until the techs could assess what had
happened to them.
But this scaled, half-serpent thing—they could not nurse
it in the LB. And how long before Jellico sent them
instructions?
Dane knelt beside the broken container. Surely the thing would
be frozen stiff soon. Reptiles were especially sensitive to
extremes of both cold and heat. Perhaps they could freeze it and
keep it that way, as they had kept the body of the dead stranger on
the Queen.
What had seemed feeble straggles at first were growing stronger
instead of weaker. If the thing felt the cold, the chill stimulated
it to greater efforts instead of sending it into stupor and death.
The container shook back and forth now under the wriggling and fell
over on its side. Through the rent in the top, not large enough for
the creature to crawl through, was thrust a scaled foot, large
claws gouging at the frost-filled ground for purchase to pull
itself out.
Dane changed the reading on his stunner to half and rayed the
container. The clawed foot released its clutch on the soil and
relaxed. The container ceased rocking.
“Two more want out.” Ah had been stacking the
containers. Now he indicated two set to one side.
These had not been misused by the feaster. However, before the
men could move, now the tops swung open as they were triggered to
do at “birthing,” and the things inside began to crawl
out. Rip beamed them unconscious.
Dragon heads on long necks swung limply over the edges of their
boxes.
“How about the others?” Dane went to check. But
there were no more signs of life. The warning tags on the covers
were safely blank.
“What do we do? Give them full beam and finish them
off?” Ali asked.
Probably the most sensible move. But they were cargo, and they
might be needed. Dane said as much and saw Rip nod slowly as if he
agreed.
“The labs might want them. Maybe they could tell more
about the radiation by examining them. But where do we put
them?”
“Yes, where?” Ali demanded. “The LB? If so,
we’d better move out. It’s turned into a part-time zoo
already. And these”—his nose wrinkled—”are
not the best shipmates. At least they don’t smell
fresh—”
Certainly the fetid odor of the inert reptiles made them the
last things one wanted penned under or around one’s bed. But
they would never live outside unless some kind of a heated pen
could be rigged. Dane wondered about that aloud.
“We have the brach cage. If they cooperate as they did
last night,” Rip suggested, “we can put them in the
extra hammock. And these containers, could we pound them out and
weld them around the cage with a heat unit hooked up?”
Ali picked up one of the smashed containers. “Can’t
promise anything, but it’s worth trying. At least we
can’t share the LB with them loose or in boxes either. That
stink’s enough to send one’s stomach into space. How
long will they stay under?”
Dane did not want to touch the unconscious things, and he had no
way of judging. The only answer was that one of them would have to
stay on guard while the other two worked.
“There’s another problem,” Rip said, and it
was not the kind of thought to add brightness to their day.
“That thing that smashed in here might have acquired a taste
for pseudo lathsmer. If it trails or hunts by scent, it might
follow to the LB. Do we want that?”
That made sense, Dane thought. His first solution had been to
get the creatures back to the craft and build the heated pen right
outside. But did they need to do that?
Ali responded to the same idea. “We could set up a nasty
jolt for anything that did come hunting,” he offered.
“Stotz gave me a tool kit when we left, and we can run a wire
from the ship and set up a force field—”
Dane was willing to trust to Ali. Anyone who held a
cadet’s berth under Johan Stotz knew his business, and it
would not be the first time that a Free Trader crew improvised.
Half their wandering life depended upon imaginative thinking when
confronted by a crisis.
So that long day was spent in hard labor—Ali providing the
information and technical knowledge they must have, Rip and Dane
giving untrained labor. They straightened out the three containers
the strange hunter had mauled and two others whose tabs reported
the contents dead, throwing the misshapen embryos those had held
into a pit and rolling stones over them, well away from where they proposed to
build the pen.
In the end they had a somewhat lopsided-looking structure that
should be large enough to house the three still sleeping creatures,
and this fitted about the brach cage stripped of all its contents.
Ali rigged his force field, warning them that they were thus
exhausting the power of the LB.
The brachs appeared perfectly content to be transferred to the
fourth hammock in the cabin. In fact, they slept away much of the
day, and Dane wondered if they were, in the natural state,
nocturnal, reminding himself to be sure to dog down the hatch door
that night just in case they took a fancy to wander.
They did not leave the dragon pen by the rest of the containers.
Those they restacked and recovered with many more stones. In the
bargain, Ali cut down three fairly good-sized trees and dragged
them so that their thick upper branches met and tangled about the
cache.
The pen they set closer to the LB, using the saw to clear the
underbrush not only around the site they chose but also in a
cutting back to the LB, so they were given a clear path to it,
should need arise.
Dane had no idea as to what food the mutants would eat. Judging
by their teeth, they might be carnivores. So his offering was a
panful of squeezed out E-rations, which he left for the creatures
when they awakened from the stunner-induced sleep. If they ever
did—for it seemed to him that their day-long sleep was
ominous, though it made their own task that much easier.
Ali rigged an alarm to awaken them if the pen was approached
during the night. They were all almost too tired to eat as they
settled in their hammocks for the night. Dane checked the door
before he went to his. There had been stirring among the brachs,
but he had left out food and water. He only hoped that if they did
go roaming, they would be considerate enough to avoid waking the
human members of the crew, but there was a small nagging worry in
his mind, as a hint of toothache might come and go before a final
explosion of pain in the jaw. The brachs had been too quiet, too
cooperative during the day. He wondered if they were laying plans
of their own.
The fact that it was freezing cold out might deter them from exploration, even if they could master the locking system
set up on the hatch door. He did not believe they would really
venture out. He was so tired that even the prick of worry could not
keep him awake.
Cold—bitter, bone-reaching cold. He was buried in the
glacier looking down into the emerald lake, but the cold was a part
of him. He must move, must break the film of ice, gain his
freedom—or else he would slide, still in the core of a block,
to be lost forever in green water depths. He must break loose. He
made a mighty effort.
Under him the block swung and shook. It was giving away—he
was falling into the lake! He must get free—
The jar of landing on
the deck of the LB, the hammock twisted over him, brought Dane
awake. He was shivering still with the cold of his dream. But it
wasn’t from his dream! Cold air did sweep over him. He
scrambled to his hands and knees, and in the very subdued light of
a single rod over the controls, he saw the hatch door partly open
and heard the moan of the wind outside.
The brachs! He shut the hatch first and then turned to the
hammock where they had bedded down the aliens. As he expected, that
was empty. Only the pile of bedding from their cage lay there,
though he wasted a moment to pull that aside, hoping to find them
cuddled under it.
He still had that in his hand when the buzz of the warning Ali
had rigged sounded loudly through the LB. If the hunter had sniffed
them out, the brachs could not only be in the freezing cold but
helpless before that menace!
Dane grabbed his thermo jacket even as he saw Rip and Ali begin
to pull out of their hammocks.
“The brachs are gone,” he told them tersely,
“and the cage alarm is on.” He need not have added
that, with its buzz punishing their ears in that confined
space.
He picked up a hand beamer and snapped it to the fore of his
belt, leaving his hands free. The brachs rather than the dragons
must be their first concern. Outside the LB it was as cold as he
had feared. By his timer it was well past midnight, into the early
morning hours. The low ray of his beamer—for he kept it to
the low cycle—picked up marks in the frost, not well defined,
but which he thought were brach tracks. He could only hope that the thick wall of brush
had kept them to the path for a swift escape.
Dane heard the hatch clang shut and knew that the others must be
on his heels, but he tried to walk as noiselessly has he could and
with what speed the night, the low light, and the rough ground
would allow. Luckily they did not have too far to go, always
supposing that the brachs had been entrapped in the force field Ali
had set by the dragon cage.
Though Dane might be going carefully, there was something ahead
that sought no such progress. The thud of the same ponderous tread
they had earlier heard was loud.
So the hunter had come back in search of the embryos. Now, as
Dane half hesitated, holding his stunner at full charge but
ignorant of what protection it would be against an alien life form,
he heard a cry—shrill, rising in ululation of fear. And
though he had not heard a brach scream before, he was very sure
that had come from one of their throats.
Dane snapped the beamer to full and ran, the magnetic plates on
his boot soles waking a hollow echo on the frozen ground. It was
only seconds before he burst into the clearing they had made for
the cage. Around it blazed the haze of the force field. Within that
tenuous defense crouched the brachs. One of the kits lay on the
ground, its brother or sister huddled against it, while, with their
heads down to present nose horns to the enemy, the two adults stood
guard.
It was a pitiful guard, for that which confronted them might
have smashed both into bloody paste with a single swipe of one of
its six limbs. It reared high, bracing itself back so that its
rounded abdomen touched the ground, four limbs serving as a
ship’s cradle to anchor it there, while it swung its smaller
torso and its long front arms back and forth before the force
screen.
Apparently it was wary of that, for it did not try to touch the
haze, but the strangeness of the attacker startled Dane into
momentary immobility. Ant—beetle? No, it had no hard overskin
such as those insects possessed. Instead it was covered, over
rounded paunch, back, and thorax with long fur of hair of
grayed-black, matted and filled with twigs and leaves, until it
almost resembled one of the bushes moving, supposing its head,
those waving forelimbs, and its aura of malignancy might be
disregarded.
The upper limbs ended in long, narrow, toothed claws, which it constantly opened and shut, making swift darts with
them at the force field, though it seemingly still hesitated to
reach into that. Dane took aim on the round head in which the fore
part was largely covered by great faceted eyes, another insectile
resemblance.
The head shook as his stun beam must have caught its center.
Then the thing looked down, over its shoulder at an angle he would
not have thought possible for any living thing with a backbone or
skeleton to assume.
One of the clawed forelimbs swung, but Dane grimly stood his
ground, continuing to pour the full strength of the stun beam at
its head. However, its actions were such that he feared he had
chosen the wrong way to knock it out. Did it carry what brain it
had somewhere else in that monstrous body? Ali and Rip, seeing that
Dane’s attack did not knock it out, aimed lower, one at the
thorax, the other at the barrel abdomen. Some one of the three must
have reached a vital part, for the flailing limbs fell, to flap
feebly a time or two against the body. It shuffled half around, as
if attempting to flee, and then crashed, missing the dragon cage
and the beleaguered brachs by only a little.
Ali snapped off the force field, and they hurried to the smaller
creatures. Three were unhurt, but the kit lying on the ground had a
tear along its shoulder down to its ribs, and it whimpered
pitifully as Dane bent over it, the rest of the family drawing back
as if they knew he meant to help.
“The dragons”—Ali had gone to peer into the
cage—“are gone. Look here!” Under his touch the
door swung open as if they had never latched it. But Dane would
have taken an oath that they had.
He gathered up the kit with all the gentleness he could and
started back for the LB, the other three brachs close behind him,
chittering those sounds that, the more one heard them, sounded like
words.
“We’ll look for the dragons,” Rip said,
“if you can manage.”
“I can.” Dane wanted to get the brachs back to the
warmth and safety of the LB. Neither Ali nor Rip would take chances
with the stunned monster he knew. The first thought must now be for
the wounded brach.
Whether remedies intended for humans would heal the wounded kit,
he had no way of being sure, but those were all he had to use. So
he sprayed the wound with antibiotics, painted it with a thin coat of plasta-heal, and settled the
small body in the hammock where its mother speedily joined it,
pulling it gently against her and licking its head until its eyes
closed and apparently it slept.
The male brach and the other kit still squatted on the shelf
where they had all climbed to watch Dane at his doctoring. Now, as
he put away the med-kit, the cargo master looked at them. That they
seemed able to speak to one another was evident. Could they
communicate with him or he with them? There was one provision that
was regular equipment on an LB and that he might try. He went to
one of the emergency storage pockets and brought out a box, taking
up its contents with care. There was a small mike, a voice box to
strap to his own throat, and a flat disk. The second set of throat
mike and strap he put to one side. Then he set the disk before the
male brach.
“I, Dane—” He tried the oldest of all
approaches, giving his own name. “I, friend—”
His hopes were so far realized that a series of squeaks did come
from the disk. But whether the subtle speech translator had indeed
made clear that limited reassurance he could not tell.
The male brach made a startled sidewise leap that almost took it
completely off the shelf, and the kit screeched, jumping for the
hammock, huddling down beside the female. Her nose had come up to
present the horn, her lips drawn back in a warning snarl.
But the male did not retreat any farther. Instead, he hunkered
down, looking from Dane to the disk, as if he were analyzing the
problem. He hitched closer, watching Dane. The man tried again.
“I, friend—”
This time the chittering did not startle the brach. He advanced
to lay a forepaw on the disk, then touched its short antenna wire,
looking from that to the mike against Dane’s throat.
“My hand, it is empty. I, friend—” Dane moved
with infinite care, holding out his hand, palm up and empty as he
had said. The brach bent forward, advanced its long nose, and
sniffed.
Dane withdrew his hand, got slowly to his feet, brought out the
food mixture, and filled the bowl. “Food,” he said distinctly. Water was poured into the container. “Water,
to drink—” He set them both where the brach could see
them.
The female brach called out, and her mate scooped up the food
dish, taking it to her. She sat up in the hammock, dipping up some
of the mixture, licking it from her paw, pushing more into the
mouth of the injured kit, who had also roused. The male took a long
drink before he carried the water to those in the hammock, but he
did not remain with his family. Instead he leaped once more to the
shelf by the disk. Now he squatted with his snout very close to it,
chittering at some length. He had the idea, at least half of it,
Dane exulted. Now, could he get him to wear the other throat mike
so the translator would work both ways? Before he could reach for
it, the hatch opened. The male scuttled away from the disk and
plumped into the hammock, and Dane turned, with some exasperation,
to face Rip and Ali.
At sight of their expressions his attempt to communicate with
the brachs was no longer of first importance.
“Rise and orbit!”
Dane was jarred out of sleep, his hammock oscillating from a
hearty push Rip must have delivered, for Shannon still had a hand
raised as if to shove again if his first assault was not effective.
Dane sat up groggily. For a second or two he was not oriented. This
was not his cabin on the Queen.
Beyond Rip, as he was able to focus better, he saw Ali wearing a
thermo jacket, already at the hatch as if impatiently awaiting
him.
“What’s the—?”
“We may have trouble,” Ali answered.
“See?”
He pointed. Ali had made certain safeguard arrangements when
they had completed their two caches—that of the box and that
of the embryos. He had set small ray warns on each so that any
disturbance would be recorded on an improvised pickup, and now one
was blinking red with warning enough to shake Dane fully out of
sleep.
“Which one?” With their present luck it would be the
box, of course. He swung stiffly out of the hammock and reached for
his own thermo wear.
But Ali surprised him. “The embryos. Fire rockets,
can’t you—this is a speed job!”
They came out into the early morning and a crisp chill, which
made Dane pull up his hood with its visored face plate and tuck his
hands into the gloves, which dangled at the ends of his sleeves,
but he remembered to make fast the hatch, ensuring that the brachs
were safe in the warm cabin.
There was a rime of frost on twigs and leaves, giving a silvery
coating to the vegetation, and their breath formed small white
clouds.
“Listen!” Rip threw up his hand as if to bar them
from entering the path they had made yesterday when dragging the
containers to the cache.
They heard a crackling, as if something large forced its way
through the brush. There was another noise, a kind of snort
sounding now and then, and from that they judged that whatever
might be sniffing around was no small creature.
Dane drew his stunner, thumbed its controls to full force, and
saw that his companions were doing the same. The growth hid
whatever crunched along, and they could only trace it by sound. But
by the sound it was going away, not coming toward them. They stood
listening for several minutes until they were sure the unknown had
retreated farther into the wood.
That it had been nosing about the embryos’ cache Dane was
sure. Perhaps there was some scent that attracted it. They had best
see how much damage it had done. The lathsmers were useless to the settlers—that was
positive—but no cargo could be destroyed until ordered, and
Dane did not have that order. Therefore, he must protect the boxes
until he did.
They had not gone far along the tracks left by their journey of
the day before when they came to the signs left by the other thing.
It had tramped, or rather stomped. There were prints breaking the
frozen crust of the ground, large enough so that when Dane knelt to
measure his hand beside them, the marks spread beyond the stretch
of his fingers. They were not very plain, for the frostbound soil
had resisted even this heavy weight. They were more like rounded
holes than anything else.
A stunner set on high would take care of most creatures, but
there were on some worlds menaces with nervous systems on which
such a ray would have no more effect than the flick of a twig. Then
a blaster was the only answer, but those they did not have.
So now they went slowly, listening, relying on the fact the
crashing was faint and the unknown was still going from them. When
they came to where they had hidden the containers, they had more
proof of the strength of what they had not yet seen, for the stones
and earth they had piled with such backbreaking effort to hide the
cache had been pulled away. The containers themselves had been
battered and broken, though they had been made to withstand all the
shocks and strains that might occur during space flight. They were
twisted and rent, and two had been opened as if they had been as
easy to handle as an E-ration tube.
And as an E-ration tube would have been by a hungry man, they
had been completely emptied. Dane kicked one out of the way to see
a third that had been bent and then left. He had not been mistaken.
What had rested so cushioned inside was stirring. But it was not
time for it to be decanted yet! As with the brachs, its
“birth” was coming ahead of schedule.
He could see the writhing of the monster body inside. A few more
minutes and it could certainly die. Since it was a monster, let it.
Only his sense of duty objected. Cargo intact—that was what
it said. And perhaps it would be proof of their own innocence to
keep these embryos intact until the techs could assess what had
happened to them.
But this scaled, half-serpent thing—they could not nurse
it in the LB. And how long before Jellico sent them
instructions?
Dane knelt beside the broken container. Surely the thing would
be frozen stiff soon. Reptiles were especially sensitive to
extremes of both cold and heat. Perhaps they could freeze it and
keep it that way, as they had kept the body of the dead stranger on
the Queen.
What had seemed feeble straggles at first were growing stronger
instead of weaker. If the thing felt the cold, the chill stimulated
it to greater efforts instead of sending it into stupor and death.
The container shook back and forth now under the wriggling and fell
over on its side. Through the rent in the top, not large enough for
the creature to crawl through, was thrust a scaled foot, large
claws gouging at the frost-filled ground for purchase to pull
itself out.
Dane changed the reading on his stunner to half and rayed the
container. The clawed foot released its clutch on the soil and
relaxed. The container ceased rocking.
“Two more want out.” Ah had been stacking the
containers. Now he indicated two set to one side.
These had not been misused by the feaster. However, before the
men could move, now the tops swung open as they were triggered to
do at “birthing,” and the things inside began to crawl
out. Rip beamed them unconscious.
Dragon heads on long necks swung limply over the edges of their
boxes.
“How about the others?” Dane went to check. But
there were no more signs of life. The warning tags on the covers
were safely blank.
“What do we do? Give them full beam and finish them
off?” Ali asked.
Probably the most sensible move. But they were cargo, and they
might be needed. Dane said as much and saw Rip nod slowly as if he
agreed.
“The labs might want them. Maybe they could tell more
about the radiation by examining them. But where do we put
them?”
“Yes, where?” Ali demanded. “The LB? If so,
we’d better move out. It’s turned into a part-time zoo
already. And these”—his nose wrinkled—”are
not the best shipmates. At least they don’t smell
fresh—”
Certainly the fetid odor of the inert reptiles made them the
last things one wanted penned under or around one’s bed. But
they would never live outside unless some kind of a heated pen
could be rigged. Dane wondered about that aloud.
“We have the brach cage. If they cooperate as they did
last night,” Rip suggested, “we can put them in the
extra hammock. And these containers, could we pound them out and
weld them around the cage with a heat unit hooked up?”
Ali picked up one of the smashed containers. “Can’t
promise anything, but it’s worth trying. At least we
can’t share the LB with them loose or in boxes either. That
stink’s enough to send one’s stomach into space. How
long will they stay under?”
Dane did not want to touch the unconscious things, and he had no
way of judging. The only answer was that one of them would have to
stay on guard while the other two worked.
“There’s another problem,” Rip said, and it
was not the kind of thought to add brightness to their day.
“That thing that smashed in here might have acquired a taste
for pseudo lathsmer. If it trails or hunts by scent, it might
follow to the LB. Do we want that?”
That made sense, Dane thought. His first solution had been to
get the creatures back to the craft and build the heated pen right
outside. But did they need to do that?
Ali responded to the same idea. “We could set up a nasty
jolt for anything that did come hunting,” he offered.
“Stotz gave me a tool kit when we left, and we can run a wire
from the ship and set up a force field—”
Dane was willing to trust to Ali. Anyone who held a
cadet’s berth under Johan Stotz knew his business, and it
would not be the first time that a Free Trader crew improvised.
Half their wandering life depended upon imaginative thinking when
confronted by a crisis.
So that long day was spent in hard labor—Ali providing the
information and technical knowledge they must have, Rip and Dane
giving untrained labor. They straightened out the three containers
the strange hunter had mauled and two others whose tabs reported
the contents dead, throwing the misshapen embryos those had held
into a pit and rolling stones over them, well away from where they proposed to
build the pen.
In the end they had a somewhat lopsided-looking structure that
should be large enough to house the three still sleeping creatures,
and this fitted about the brach cage stripped of all its contents.
Ali rigged his force field, warning them that they were thus
exhausting the power of the LB.
The brachs appeared perfectly content to be transferred to the
fourth hammock in the cabin. In fact, they slept away much of the
day, and Dane wondered if they were, in the natural state,
nocturnal, reminding himself to be sure to dog down the hatch door
that night just in case they took a fancy to wander.
They did not leave the dragon pen by the rest of the containers.
Those they restacked and recovered with many more stones. In the
bargain, Ali cut down three fairly good-sized trees and dragged
them so that their thick upper branches met and tangled about the
cache.
The pen they set closer to the LB, using the saw to clear the
underbrush not only around the site they chose but also in a
cutting back to the LB, so they were given a clear path to it,
should need arise.
Dane had no idea as to what food the mutants would eat. Judging
by their teeth, they might be carnivores. So his offering was a
panful of squeezed out E-rations, which he left for the creatures
when they awakened from the stunner-induced sleep. If they ever
did—for it seemed to him that their day-long sleep was
ominous, though it made their own task that much easier.
Ali rigged an alarm to awaken them if the pen was approached
during the night. They were all almost too tired to eat as they
settled in their hammocks for the night. Dane checked the door
before he went to his. There had been stirring among the brachs,
but he had left out food and water. He only hoped that if they did
go roaming, they would be considerate enough to avoid waking the
human members of the crew, but there was a small nagging worry in
his mind, as a hint of toothache might come and go before a final
explosion of pain in the jaw. The brachs had been too quiet, too
cooperative during the day. He wondered if they were laying plans
of their own.
The fact that it was freezing cold out might deter them from exploration, even if they could master the locking system
set up on the hatch door. He did not believe they would really
venture out. He was so tired that even the prick of worry could not
keep him awake.
Cold—bitter, bone-reaching cold. He was buried in the
glacier looking down into the emerald lake, but the cold was a part
of him. He must move, must break the film of ice, gain his
freedom—or else he would slide, still in the core of a block,
to be lost forever in green water depths. He must break loose. He
made a mighty effort.
Under him the block swung and shook. It was giving away—he
was falling into the lake! He must get free—
The jar of landing on
the deck of the LB, the hammock twisted over him, brought Dane
awake. He was shivering still with the cold of his dream. But it
wasn’t from his dream! Cold air did sweep over him. He
scrambled to his hands and knees, and in the very subdued light of
a single rod over the controls, he saw the hatch door partly open
and heard the moan of the wind outside.
The brachs! He shut the hatch first and then turned to the
hammock where they had bedded down the aliens. As he expected, that
was empty. Only the pile of bedding from their cage lay there,
though he wasted a moment to pull that aside, hoping to find them
cuddled under it.
He still had that in his hand when the buzz of the warning Ali
had rigged sounded loudly through the LB. If the hunter had sniffed
them out, the brachs could not only be in the freezing cold but
helpless before that menace!
Dane grabbed his thermo jacket even as he saw Rip and Ali begin
to pull out of their hammocks.
“The brachs are gone,” he told them tersely,
“and the cage alarm is on.” He need not have added
that, with its buzz punishing their ears in that confined
space.
He picked up a hand beamer and snapped it to the fore of his
belt, leaving his hands free. The brachs rather than the dragons
must be their first concern. Outside the LB it was as cold as he
had feared. By his timer it was well past midnight, into the early
morning hours. The low ray of his beamer—for he kept it to
the low cycle—picked up marks in the frost, not well defined,
but which he thought were brach tracks. He could only hope that the thick wall of brush
had kept them to the path for a swift escape.
Dane heard the hatch clang shut and knew that the others must be
on his heels, but he tried to walk as noiselessly has he could and
with what speed the night, the low light, and the rough ground
would allow. Luckily they did not have too far to go, always
supposing that the brachs had been entrapped in the force field Ali
had set by the dragon cage.
Though Dane might be going carefully, there was something ahead
that sought no such progress. The thud of the same ponderous tread
they had earlier heard was loud.
So the hunter had come back in search of the embryos. Now, as
Dane half hesitated, holding his stunner at full charge but
ignorant of what protection it would be against an alien life form,
he heard a cry—shrill, rising in ululation of fear. And
though he had not heard a brach scream before, he was very sure
that had come from one of their throats.
Dane snapped the beamer to full and ran, the magnetic plates on
his boot soles waking a hollow echo on the frozen ground. It was
only seconds before he burst into the clearing they had made for
the cage. Around it blazed the haze of the force field. Within that
tenuous defense crouched the brachs. One of the kits lay on the
ground, its brother or sister huddled against it, while, with their
heads down to present nose horns to the enemy, the two adults stood
guard.
It was a pitiful guard, for that which confronted them might
have smashed both into bloody paste with a single swipe of one of
its six limbs. It reared high, bracing itself back so that its
rounded abdomen touched the ground, four limbs serving as a
ship’s cradle to anchor it there, while it swung its smaller
torso and its long front arms back and forth before the force
screen.
Apparently it was wary of that, for it did not try to touch the
haze, but the strangeness of the attacker startled Dane into
momentary immobility. Ant—beetle? No, it had no hard overskin
such as those insects possessed. Instead it was covered, over
rounded paunch, back, and thorax with long fur of hair of
grayed-black, matted and filled with twigs and leaves, until it
almost resembled one of the bushes moving, supposing its head,
those waving forelimbs, and its aura of malignancy might be
disregarded.
The upper limbs ended in long, narrow, toothed claws, which it constantly opened and shut, making swift darts with
them at the force field, though it seemingly still hesitated to
reach into that. Dane took aim on the round head in which the fore
part was largely covered by great faceted eyes, another insectile
resemblance.
The head shook as his stun beam must have caught its center.
Then the thing looked down, over its shoulder at an angle he would
not have thought possible for any living thing with a backbone or
skeleton to assume.
One of the clawed forelimbs swung, but Dane grimly stood his
ground, continuing to pour the full strength of the stun beam at
its head. However, its actions were such that he feared he had
chosen the wrong way to knock it out. Did it carry what brain it
had somewhere else in that monstrous body? Ali and Rip, seeing that
Dane’s attack did not knock it out, aimed lower, one at the
thorax, the other at the barrel abdomen. Some one of the three must
have reached a vital part, for the flailing limbs fell, to flap
feebly a time or two against the body. It shuffled half around, as
if attempting to flee, and then crashed, missing the dragon cage
and the beleaguered brachs by only a little.
Ali snapped off the force field, and they hurried to the smaller
creatures. Three were unhurt, but the kit lying on the ground had a
tear along its shoulder down to its ribs, and it whimpered
pitifully as Dane bent over it, the rest of the family drawing back
as if they knew he meant to help.
“The dragons”—Ali had gone to peer into the
cage—“are gone. Look here!” Under his touch the
door swung open as if they had never latched it. But Dane would
have taken an oath that they had.
He gathered up the kit with all the gentleness he could and
started back for the LB, the other three brachs close behind him,
chittering those sounds that, the more one heard them, sounded like
words.
“We’ll look for the dragons,” Rip said,
“if you can manage.”
“I can.” Dane wanted to get the brachs back to the
warmth and safety of the LB. Neither Ali nor Rip would take chances
with the stunned monster he knew. The first thought must now be for
the wounded brach.
Whether remedies intended for humans would heal the wounded kit,
he had no way of being sure, but those were all he had to use. So
he sprayed the wound with antibiotics, painted it with a thin coat of plasta-heal, and settled the
small body in the hammock where its mother speedily joined it,
pulling it gently against her and licking its head until its eyes
closed and apparently it slept.
The male brach and the other kit still squatted on the shelf
where they had all climbed to watch Dane at his doctoring. Now, as
he put away the med-kit, the cargo master looked at them. That they
seemed able to speak to one another was evident. Could they
communicate with him or he with them? There was one provision that
was regular equipment on an LB and that he might try. He went to
one of the emergency storage pockets and brought out a box, taking
up its contents with care. There was a small mike, a voice box to
strap to his own throat, and a flat disk. The second set of throat
mike and strap he put to one side. Then he set the disk before the
male brach.
“I, Dane—” He tried the oldest of all
approaches, giving his own name. “I, friend—”
His hopes were so far realized that a series of squeaks did come
from the disk. But whether the subtle speech translator had indeed
made clear that limited reassurance he could not tell.
The male brach made a startled sidewise leap that almost took it
completely off the shelf, and the kit screeched, jumping for the
hammock, huddling down beside the female. Her nose had come up to
present the horn, her lips drawn back in a warning snarl.
But the male did not retreat any farther. Instead, he hunkered
down, looking from Dane to the disk, as if he were analyzing the
problem. He hitched closer, watching Dane. The man tried again.
“I, friend—”
This time the chittering did not startle the brach. He advanced
to lay a forepaw on the disk, then touched its short antenna wire,
looking from that to the mike against Dane’s throat.
“My hand, it is empty. I, friend—” Dane moved
with infinite care, holding out his hand, palm up and empty as he
had said. The brach bent forward, advanced its long nose, and
sniffed.
Dane withdrew his hand, got slowly to his feet, brought out the
food mixture, and filled the bowl. “Food,” he said distinctly. Water was poured into the container. “Water,
to drink—” He set them both where the brach could see
them.
The female brach called out, and her mate scooped up the food
dish, taking it to her. She sat up in the hammock, dipping up some
of the mixture, licking it from her paw, pushing more into the
mouth of the injured kit, who had also roused. The male took a long
drink before he carried the water to those in the hammock, but he
did not remain with his family. Instead he leaped once more to the
shelf by the disk. Now he squatted with his snout very close to it,
chittering at some length. He had the idea, at least half of it,
Dane exulted. Now, could he get him to wear the other throat mike
so the translator would work both ways? Before he could reach for
it, the hatch opened. The male scuttled away from the disk and
plumped into the hammock, and Dane turned, with some exasperation,
to face Rip and Ali.
At sight of their expressions his attempt to communicate with
the brachs was no longer of first importance.