As the raft revolved slowly it also slipped
downstream at a steadily increasing pace, for the current had them
in hold. The wolverines pressed close to Shann until the musky
scent of their fur, their animal warmth, enveloped him. One growled
deep in its throat, perhaps in answer to that wind-borne wail.
“Hound?” Shann asked.
Beside him in the dark Thorvald was working loose one of the
poles they had readied to help control the raft’s voyaging.
The current carried them along, but there was a need for the length
of sapling to keep them free from rocks and water-buried snags.
“What hound?” the younger man demanded more sharply
when there came no immediate answer.
“The Throgs’ tracker. But why did they import
one?” Thorvald’s puzzlement was plain in his tone. He
added a moment later, with some of his usual firmness, “We
may be in for bad trouble now. Use of a hound means an attempt to
take prisoners—”
“Then they do not know that we are here, as Terrans, I
mean?”
Thorvald seemed to be sorting out his thoughts when he replied
to that. “They could have brought a hound here just on chance
that they might miss one of us in the initial mop-up. Or, if they
believe we are natives, they could want a specimen for
study.”
“Wouldn’t they just blast down Terrans on
sight?”
Shann saw the dark blot which was Thorvald’s head shake in
negation.
“They might need a live Terran—badly and
soon.”
“Why?”
“To operate the camp call beam.”
Shann’s momentary bewilderment vanished. He knew enough of
Survey procedure to guess the reason for such a move on the part of
the aliens.
“The settler transport?”
“Yes, the ship. She won’t planet here without the
proper signal. And the Throgs can’t give that. If they
don’t take her, their time’s run out before they have
even made a start here.”
“But how could they know that the transport is nearly due?
When we intercept their calls they’re pure gibberish to us.
Can they read our codes?”
“The supposition is that they can’t. Only,
concerning Throgs, all we know is supposition. Anyway, they do know
the routine for establishing a Terran colony, and we can’t
alter that procedure except in small nonessentials,” Thorvald
said grimly. “If that transport doesn’t pick up the
proper signal to set down here on schedule, her captain will call
in the patrol escort . . . then exit one Throg
base. But if the beetle-heads can trick the ship in and take her,
then they’ll have a clear five or six more months here to
consolidate their own position. After that it would take more than
just one patrol cruiser to clear Warlock; it will require a fleet.
So the Throgs will have another world to play with, and an
important one. This lies on a direct line between the Odin and
Kulkulkah systems. A Throg base on such a trade route could
eventually cut us right out of this quarter of the
galaxy.”
“So you think they want to capture us in order to bring
the transport in?”
“By our type of reasoning, that would be a logical
move—if they know we are here. They haven’t
too many of those hounds, and they don’t risk them on petty
jobs. I’d hoped we’d covered our trail well. But we had
to risk that attack on the camp . . . I needed
the map case!” Again Thorvald might have been talking to
himself. “Time . . . and the right
maps—” he brought his fist down on the raft, making the
platform tremble—“that’s what I have to have
now.”
Another patch of light-willows stretched along the riverbanks,
and as they sailed through that ribbon of ghostly radiance they
could see each other’s faces. Thorvald’s was bleak,
hard, his eyes on the stream behind them as if he expected at any
moment to see a Throg emerge from the surface of the water.
“Suppose that thing—” Shann pointed upstream
with his chin—“follows us? What is it anyway?”
“Hound” suggested Terran dog, but he couldn’t
stretch his imagination to believe in a working co-operation
between Throg and any mammal.
“A rather spectacular combination of toad and lizard, with
a few other grisly touches, is about as close as you can get to a
general description. And that won’t be too accurate, because
like the Throgs its remote ancestors must have been of the insect
family. If the thing follows us, and I think we can be sure that it
will, we’ll have to take steps. There is always this
advantage—those hounds cannot be controlled from a flyer, and
the beetle-heads never take kindly to foot slogging. So we
won’t have to expect any speedy chase. If it slips its
masters in rough country, we can try to ambush it.” In the
dim light Thorvald was frowning. “I flew over the territory
ahead on two sweeps, and it is a crazy mixture. If we can reach the
rough country bordering the sea, we’ll have won the first
round. I don’t believe that the Throgs will be in a hurry to
track us in there. They’ll try two alternatives to chasing us
on foot. One, use their energy beams to rake any suspect valley,
and since there are hundreds of valleys all pretty much alike, that
will take some time. Or they can attempt to shake us out with a
dumdum should they have one here, which I doubt.”
Shann tensed. The stories of the effects of the Throgs’
dumdum weapon were anything but pretty.
“And to get a dumdum,” Thorvald continued as if he
were discussing a purely theoretical matter and not a threat of
something worse than death, “they’ll have to bring in
one of their major ships. Which they will hesitate to do with a
cruiser near at hand. Our own danger spot now is the section we
should strike soon after dawn tomorrow if the rate of this current
is what I have timed it. There is a band of desert on this side of
the mountains. The river gorge deepens there and the land is bare.
Let them send a ship over and we could be as visible as if we were
sending up flares—”
“How about taking cover now and going on only at
night?” suggested Shann.
“Ordinarily, I’d say yes. But with time pressing us
now, no. If we keep straight on, we could reach the foothills in
about forty hours, maybe less. And we have to stay with the river.
To strike across country there without good supplies and on foot is
sheer folly.”
Two days. With perhaps the Throgs unleashing their hound on
land, combing from their flyers. With a
desert . . . Shann put out his hands to the
wolverines. The prospect certainly didn’t seem anywhere near
as simple as it had the night before when Thorvald had planned this
escape. But then the Survey officer had left out quite a few points
which were not pertinent. Was he also leaving out other essentials?
Shann wanted to ask, but somehow he could not.
After a while he dozed, his head resting on his knees. He awoke,
roused out of a vivid dream, a dream so detailed and so deeply
impressed in a picture on his mind that he was confused when he
blinked at the riverbank visible in the half-light of early
dawn.
Instead of that stretch of earth and ragged vegetation now
gliding past him as the raft angled along, he should have been
fronting a vast skull stark against the sky—a skull whose
outlines were oddly inhuman. From its eyeholes issued and returned
flying things while its sharply protruding lower jaw was lapped by
water. The skull’s color had been a violent clash of
blood-red and purple. Shann blinked again at the riverbank, seeing
transposed on it still that ghostly haze of bone-bare dome,
cavernous eyeholes and nose slit, fanged jaws. That skull was a
mountain, or a mountain was a skull—and it was important to
him; he must locate it!
He moved stiffly, his legs and arms cramped but not cold. The
wolverines stirred on either side of him. Thorvald continued to
sleep, curled up beyond, the pole still clasped in his hands. A
flat map case was slung by a strap about his neck, its thin
envelope between his arm and his body as if for safekeeping. On the
smooth flap was the Survey seal, and it was fastened with a finger
lock.
Thorvald had lost some of the bright hard surface he had shown
at the spaceport where Shann had first sighted him. There were
hollows in his cheeks, sending into high relief those bone ridges
beneath his eye sockets, giving him a faint resemblance to the
skull of Shann’s dream. His face was grimed, his field
uniform stained and torn. Only his hair was as bright as ever.
Shann smeared the back of his hand across his own face, not
doubting that he must present an even more disreputable appearance.
He leaned forward cautiously to look into the water, but that
surface was not quiet enough to act as a mirror.
Getting to his feet as the raft bobbed under his shift of
weight, Shann studied the territory now about them. He could not
match Thorvald’s inches, just as he must have a third less
bulk than the officer, but standing, he could sight something of
what now lay beyond the rising banks of the cut. That grass which
had been so thick in the meadowlands around the camp had thinned
into separate clumps, pale lavender in color. And the scrawniness
of stem and blade suggested dehydration and poor soil. The earth
showing between those clumps was not of the usual blue, but pallid,
too, bleached to gray, while the bushes along the stream’s
edge were few and smaller. They must have crossed the line into the
desert Thorvald had promised.
Shann edged around to face west. There was light enough in the
sky to sight tall black pyramids waiting. They had to reach those
distant mountains, mountains whose other side rested in sea water.
He studied them carefully, surveying each peak he could separate
from its fellows.
Did the skull lie among them? The conviction that the place he
had seen in his dreams was real, that it was to be found on
Warlock, persisted. Not only was it a definite feature of the
landscape somewhere in the wild places of this world, but it was
also necessary for him to locate it. Why? Shann puzzled over that,
with a growing uneasiness which was not quite fear, not yet,
anyway.
Thorvald moved. The raft tilted and the wolverines growled.
Shann sat down, one hand out to the officer’s shoulder in
warning. Feeling that touch Thorvald shifted, one hand striking out
blindly in a blow which Shann was just able to avoid while with the
other he pinned the map case yet tighter to him.
“Take it easy!” Shann urged.
The other’s eyelids flickered. He looked up, but not as if
he saw Shann at all.
“The Cavern of the Veil—” he muttered.
“Utgard . . . ”
Then his eyes focused and he sat up, gazing around him with a
frown.
“We’re in the desert,” Shann announced.
Thorvald got up, balancing on feet planted a little apart,
looking to the faded expanse of the waste spreading from the river
cut. He stared at the mountains before he squatted down to fumble
with the lock of the map case.
The wolverines were growing restless, though they still did not
try to move about too freely on the raft. They greeted Shann with
vocal complaint. He and Thorvald could satisfy their hunger with a
handful of concentrates from the survival kit. But those dry
tablets could not serve the animals. Shann studied the terrain with
more knowledge than he had possessed a week earlier. This was not
hunting land, but there remained the bounty of the river.
“We’ll have to feed Taggi and Togi,” he broke
the silence abruptly. “If we don’t, they’ll be
into the river and off on their own.”
Thorvald glanced up from one of the tough, thin sheets of map
skin, again as if he had been drawn back from some distance. His
eyes moved from Shann to the unpromising shore.
“How? With what?” he wanted to know. Then the real
urgency of the situation must have penetrated his mental isolation.
“You have an idea—?”
“There’s those fish we found them eating back by the
mountain stream,” Shann said, recalling an incident of a few
days earlier. “Rocks here, too, like those the fish were
hiding under. Maybe we can locate some of them here.”
He knew that Thorvald would be reluctant to work the raft
inshore, to spare time for such hunting. But there would be no
arguing with hungry wolverines, and he did not propose to lose the
animals for the officer’s whim.
However, Thorvald did not protest. They poled the raft out of
the main pull of the current, sending it in toward the southern
shore in the lee of a clump of light-willows. Shann scrambled
ashore, the wolverines after him, sniffing along at his heels while
he overturned likely looking rocks to unroof some odd underwater
dwellings. The fish with the rudimentary legs were present and not
agile enough even in their native element to avoid well-clawed paws
which scooped them neatly out of the river shallows. There was also
a sleek furred creature with a broad flat head and paddle-equipped
forepaws, rather like a miniature seal, which Taggi appropriated
before Shann had a chance to examine it closely. In fact, the
wolverines wrought havoc along a half-mile section of bank before
the Terran could coax them back to the raft.
As they hunted, Shann got a better idea of the land about the
river. It was sere, the vegetation dwindling except for some rough
spikes of things pushing through the parched ground like flayed
fingers, their puffed redness in contrast to the usual amethyst
hues of Warlock’s growing things. Under the climbing sun that
whole stretch of country was revealed in a starkness which at first
repelled, and then began to interest him.
He discovered Thorvald standing on the upper bluff, looking out
toward the waiting mountains. The officer turned as Shann urged the
wolverines to the raft, and when he jumped down the drop to join
them, Shann saw he carried a map strip unrolled in his hand.
“The situation is not as good as we hoped,” he told
the younger man. “We’ll have to leave the river to
cross the heights.”
“Why?”
“There’s rapids—ending in a falls.” The
officer squatted down, spreading out the strip and making stabs at
it with a nervous finger tip. “Here we have to leave. This is
all rough ground. But lying to the south there’s a gap which
may be a pass. This was made from an aerial survey.”
Shann knew enough to realize to what extent such a guide could
go wrong. Main features of the landscape would be clear enough from
aloft, but there might be insurmountable difficulties at ground
level which were not distinguishable from the air. Yet Thorvald had
planned this journey as if he had already explored their escape
route and that it was as open and easy as a stroll down Tyr’s
main transport way. Why was it so necessary that they try to reach
the sea? However, since he had no objection to voice except a
dislike for indefinite information, Shann did not question the
other’s calm assumption of command, not yet, anyway.
As they embarked and worked back into the current, Shann studied
his companion. Thorvald had freely listed the difficulties lying
before them. Yet he did not seem in the least worried about their
being able to win through to the sea—or if he was, his outer
shell of unconcern remained uncracked. Before their first day
together had ended, the younger Terran had learned that to Thorvald
he was only another tool, to be used by the Survey officer in some
project which the other believed of primary importance. And his
resentment of the valuation was under control so far. He valued
Thorvald’s knowledge, but the other’s attitude chilled
and rebuffed his need for something more than a half partnership of
work.
Why had Thorvald come back to Warlock in the first place? And
why had it been necessary for him to risk his life—perhaps
more than his life if their theory was correct concerning the
Throgs’ wish to capture a Terran—to get that set of
maps from the plundered camp? When he had first talked of that
raid, his promised loot had been supplies to fill their daily
needs; there had been no mention of maps. By all signs Thorvald was
engaged on some mission. And what would happen if he, Shann,
suddenly stopped being the other’s obedient underling and
demanded a few explanations here and now?
Only Shann knew enough about men to also know that he would not
get any information out of Thorvald that the latter was not ready
to give, and that such a show-down, coming prematurely, would only
end in his own discomfiture. He smiled wryly now, remembering his
emotions when he had first seen Ragnar Thorvald months ago. As if
the officer ever considered the likes, dislikes—or
dreams—of one Shann Lantee. No, reality and dreams seldom
approached each other. Dreams . . .
“On any of those shoreline maps,” he asked suddenly,
“do they have marked a mountain shaped like a
skull?”
Thorvald thrust with his pole. “Skull?” he repeated,
a little absently, as he so often did in answer to Shann’s
questions unless they dealt with some currently important
matter.
“A peculiar sort of skull,” Shann said. Just as
vividly as when he had first awakened, he could picture that skull
mountain with the flying things around its eye sockets. And that,
too, was odd; dream impressions usually faded with the passing of
waking hours. “It has a protruding jaw and the waves wash
that . . . red-and-purple
rock—”
“What?”
He had Thorvald’s complete attention now.
“Where did you hear about it?” That demand followed
quickly.
“I didn’t hear about it. I dreamed of it last night.
I stood there right in front of it. There were birds—or
things flying like birds—going in and out of the
eyeholes—”
“What else?” Thorvald leaned across his pole, his
eyes alive, avid, as if he would pull the reply he wanted out of
Shann by force.
“That’s all I remember—the skull
mountain.” He did not add his other impression, that he was
meant to find that skull, that he must find it.
“Nothing . . . ”
Thorvald paused, and then spoke slowly, with a visible reluctance.
“Nothing else? No cavern with a green veil—a wide green
veil—strung across it?”
Shann shook his head. “Just the skull mountain.”
Thorvald looked as if he didn’t quite believe that, but
Shann’s expression must have been convincing, for he laughed
shortly.
“Well, there goes one nice neat theory up in smoke!”
he commented. “No, your skull doesn’t appear on any of
our maps, and so probably my cavern does not exist either. They may
both be smoke screens—”
“What—?” But Shann never finished that
query.
A wind was rising in the desert to blow across the slit which
held the river, carrying with it a fine shifting of sand which
coasted down into the water as a gray haze, coating men, animals,
and raft, and sighing as snow sighs when it falls.
Only that did not drown out another cry, a thin cry, diluted by
the miles of land stretching behind them, but yet carrying that
long ululating howl they had heard in the Throg camp. Thorvald
grinned mirthlessly.
“The hound’s on trail.”
He bent to the pole, using it to aid the pace of the current.
Shann, chilled in spite of the sun’s heat, followed his
example, wondering if time had ceased to fight on their side.
As the raft revolved slowly it also slipped
downstream at a steadily increasing pace, for the current had them
in hold. The wolverines pressed close to Shann until the musky
scent of their fur, their animal warmth, enveloped him. One growled
deep in its throat, perhaps in answer to that wind-borne wail.
“Hound?” Shann asked.
Beside him in the dark Thorvald was working loose one of the
poles they had readied to help control the raft’s voyaging.
The current carried them along, but there was a need for the length
of sapling to keep them free from rocks and water-buried snags.
“What hound?” the younger man demanded more sharply
when there came no immediate answer.
“The Throgs’ tracker. But why did they import
one?” Thorvald’s puzzlement was plain in his tone. He
added a moment later, with some of his usual firmness, “We
may be in for bad trouble now. Use of a hound means an attempt to
take prisoners—”
“Then they do not know that we are here, as Terrans, I
mean?”
Thorvald seemed to be sorting out his thoughts when he replied
to that. “They could have brought a hound here just on chance
that they might miss one of us in the initial mop-up. Or, if they
believe we are natives, they could want a specimen for
study.”
“Wouldn’t they just blast down Terrans on
sight?”
Shann saw the dark blot which was Thorvald’s head shake in
negation.
“They might need a live Terran—badly and
soon.”
“Why?”
“To operate the camp call beam.”
Shann’s momentary bewilderment vanished. He knew enough of
Survey procedure to guess the reason for such a move on the part of
the aliens.
“The settler transport?”
“Yes, the ship. She won’t planet here without the
proper signal. And the Throgs can’t give that. If they
don’t take her, their time’s run out before they have
even made a start here.”
“But how could they know that the transport is nearly due?
When we intercept their calls they’re pure gibberish to us.
Can they read our codes?”
“The supposition is that they can’t. Only,
concerning Throgs, all we know is supposition. Anyway, they do know
the routine for establishing a Terran colony, and we can’t
alter that procedure except in small nonessentials,” Thorvald
said grimly. “If that transport doesn’t pick up the
proper signal to set down here on schedule, her captain will call
in the patrol escort . . . then exit one Throg
base. But if the beetle-heads can trick the ship in and take her,
then they’ll have a clear five or six more months here to
consolidate their own position. After that it would take more than
just one patrol cruiser to clear Warlock; it will require a fleet.
So the Throgs will have another world to play with, and an
important one. This lies on a direct line between the Odin and
Kulkulkah systems. A Throg base on such a trade route could
eventually cut us right out of this quarter of the
galaxy.”
“So you think they want to capture us in order to bring
the transport in?”
“By our type of reasoning, that would be a logical
move—if they know we are here. They haven’t
too many of those hounds, and they don’t risk them on petty
jobs. I’d hoped we’d covered our trail well. But we had
to risk that attack on the camp . . . I needed
the map case!” Again Thorvald might have been talking to
himself. “Time . . . and the right
maps—” he brought his fist down on the raft, making the
platform tremble—“that’s what I have to have
now.”
Another patch of light-willows stretched along the riverbanks,
and as they sailed through that ribbon of ghostly radiance they
could see each other’s faces. Thorvald’s was bleak,
hard, his eyes on the stream behind them as if he expected at any
moment to see a Throg emerge from the surface of the water.
“Suppose that thing—” Shann pointed upstream
with his chin—“follows us? What is it anyway?”
“Hound” suggested Terran dog, but he couldn’t
stretch his imagination to believe in a working co-operation
between Throg and any mammal.
“A rather spectacular combination of toad and lizard, with
a few other grisly touches, is about as close as you can get to a
general description. And that won’t be too accurate, because
like the Throgs its remote ancestors must have been of the insect
family. If the thing follows us, and I think we can be sure that it
will, we’ll have to take steps. There is always this
advantage—those hounds cannot be controlled from a flyer, and
the beetle-heads never take kindly to foot slogging. So we
won’t have to expect any speedy chase. If it slips its
masters in rough country, we can try to ambush it.” In the
dim light Thorvald was frowning. “I flew over the territory
ahead on two sweeps, and it is a crazy mixture. If we can reach the
rough country bordering the sea, we’ll have won the first
round. I don’t believe that the Throgs will be in a hurry to
track us in there. They’ll try two alternatives to chasing us
on foot. One, use their energy beams to rake any suspect valley,
and since there are hundreds of valleys all pretty much alike, that
will take some time. Or they can attempt to shake us out with a
dumdum should they have one here, which I doubt.”
Shann tensed. The stories of the effects of the Throgs’
dumdum weapon were anything but pretty.
“And to get a dumdum,” Thorvald continued as if he
were discussing a purely theoretical matter and not a threat of
something worse than death, “they’ll have to bring in
one of their major ships. Which they will hesitate to do with a
cruiser near at hand. Our own danger spot now is the section we
should strike soon after dawn tomorrow if the rate of this current
is what I have timed it. There is a band of desert on this side of
the mountains. The river gorge deepens there and the land is bare.
Let them send a ship over and we could be as visible as if we were
sending up flares—”
“How about taking cover now and going on only at
night?” suggested Shann.
“Ordinarily, I’d say yes. But with time pressing us
now, no. If we keep straight on, we could reach the foothills in
about forty hours, maybe less. And we have to stay with the river.
To strike across country there without good supplies and on foot is
sheer folly.”
Two days. With perhaps the Throgs unleashing their hound on
land, combing from their flyers. With a
desert . . . Shann put out his hands to the
wolverines. The prospect certainly didn’t seem anywhere near
as simple as it had the night before when Thorvald had planned this
escape. But then the Survey officer had left out quite a few points
which were not pertinent. Was he also leaving out other essentials?
Shann wanted to ask, but somehow he could not.
After a while he dozed, his head resting on his knees. He awoke,
roused out of a vivid dream, a dream so detailed and so deeply
impressed in a picture on his mind that he was confused when he
blinked at the riverbank visible in the half-light of early
dawn.
Instead of that stretch of earth and ragged vegetation now
gliding past him as the raft angled along, he should have been
fronting a vast skull stark against the sky—a skull whose
outlines were oddly inhuman. From its eyeholes issued and returned
flying things while its sharply protruding lower jaw was lapped by
water. The skull’s color had been a violent clash of
blood-red and purple. Shann blinked again at the riverbank, seeing
transposed on it still that ghostly haze of bone-bare dome,
cavernous eyeholes and nose slit, fanged jaws. That skull was a
mountain, or a mountain was a skull—and it was important to
him; he must locate it!
He moved stiffly, his legs and arms cramped but not cold. The
wolverines stirred on either side of him. Thorvald continued to
sleep, curled up beyond, the pole still clasped in his hands. A
flat map case was slung by a strap about his neck, its thin
envelope between his arm and his body as if for safekeeping. On the
smooth flap was the Survey seal, and it was fastened with a finger
lock.
Thorvald had lost some of the bright hard surface he had shown
at the spaceport where Shann had first sighted him. There were
hollows in his cheeks, sending into high relief those bone ridges
beneath his eye sockets, giving him a faint resemblance to the
skull of Shann’s dream. His face was grimed, his field
uniform stained and torn. Only his hair was as bright as ever.
Shann smeared the back of his hand across his own face, not
doubting that he must present an even more disreputable appearance.
He leaned forward cautiously to look into the water, but that
surface was not quiet enough to act as a mirror.
Getting to his feet as the raft bobbed under his shift of
weight, Shann studied the territory now about them. He could not
match Thorvald’s inches, just as he must have a third less
bulk than the officer, but standing, he could sight something of
what now lay beyond the rising banks of the cut. That grass which
had been so thick in the meadowlands around the camp had thinned
into separate clumps, pale lavender in color. And the scrawniness
of stem and blade suggested dehydration and poor soil. The earth
showing between those clumps was not of the usual blue, but pallid,
too, bleached to gray, while the bushes along the stream’s
edge were few and smaller. They must have crossed the line into the
desert Thorvald had promised.
Shann edged around to face west. There was light enough in the
sky to sight tall black pyramids waiting. They had to reach those
distant mountains, mountains whose other side rested in sea water.
He studied them carefully, surveying each peak he could separate
from its fellows.
Did the skull lie among them? The conviction that the place he
had seen in his dreams was real, that it was to be found on
Warlock, persisted. Not only was it a definite feature of the
landscape somewhere in the wild places of this world, but it was
also necessary for him to locate it. Why? Shann puzzled over that,
with a growing uneasiness which was not quite fear, not yet,
anyway.
Thorvald moved. The raft tilted and the wolverines growled.
Shann sat down, one hand out to the officer’s shoulder in
warning. Feeling that touch Thorvald shifted, one hand striking out
blindly in a blow which Shann was just able to avoid while with the
other he pinned the map case yet tighter to him.
“Take it easy!” Shann urged.
The other’s eyelids flickered. He looked up, but not as if
he saw Shann at all.
“The Cavern of the Veil—” he muttered.
“Utgard . . . ”
Then his eyes focused and he sat up, gazing around him with a
frown.
“We’re in the desert,” Shann announced.
Thorvald got up, balancing on feet planted a little apart,
looking to the faded expanse of the waste spreading from the river
cut. He stared at the mountains before he squatted down to fumble
with the lock of the map case.
The wolverines were growing restless, though they still did not
try to move about too freely on the raft. They greeted Shann with
vocal complaint. He and Thorvald could satisfy their hunger with a
handful of concentrates from the survival kit. But those dry
tablets could not serve the animals. Shann studied the terrain with
more knowledge than he had possessed a week earlier. This was not
hunting land, but there remained the bounty of the river.
“We’ll have to feed Taggi and Togi,” he broke
the silence abruptly. “If we don’t, they’ll be
into the river and off on their own.”
Thorvald glanced up from one of the tough, thin sheets of map
skin, again as if he had been drawn back from some distance. His
eyes moved from Shann to the unpromising shore.
“How? With what?” he wanted to know. Then the real
urgency of the situation must have penetrated his mental isolation.
“You have an idea—?”
“There’s those fish we found them eating back by the
mountain stream,” Shann said, recalling an incident of a few
days earlier. “Rocks here, too, like those the fish were
hiding under. Maybe we can locate some of them here.”
He knew that Thorvald would be reluctant to work the raft
inshore, to spare time for such hunting. But there would be no
arguing with hungry wolverines, and he did not propose to lose the
animals for the officer’s whim.
However, Thorvald did not protest. They poled the raft out of
the main pull of the current, sending it in toward the southern
shore in the lee of a clump of light-willows. Shann scrambled
ashore, the wolverines after him, sniffing along at his heels while
he overturned likely looking rocks to unroof some odd underwater
dwellings. The fish with the rudimentary legs were present and not
agile enough even in their native element to avoid well-clawed paws
which scooped them neatly out of the river shallows. There was also
a sleek furred creature with a broad flat head and paddle-equipped
forepaws, rather like a miniature seal, which Taggi appropriated
before Shann had a chance to examine it closely. In fact, the
wolverines wrought havoc along a half-mile section of bank before
the Terran could coax them back to the raft.
As they hunted, Shann got a better idea of the land about the
river. It was sere, the vegetation dwindling except for some rough
spikes of things pushing through the parched ground like flayed
fingers, their puffed redness in contrast to the usual amethyst
hues of Warlock’s growing things. Under the climbing sun that
whole stretch of country was revealed in a starkness which at first
repelled, and then began to interest him.
He discovered Thorvald standing on the upper bluff, looking out
toward the waiting mountains. The officer turned as Shann urged the
wolverines to the raft, and when he jumped down the drop to join
them, Shann saw he carried a map strip unrolled in his hand.
“The situation is not as good as we hoped,” he told
the younger man. “We’ll have to leave the river to
cross the heights.”
“Why?”
“There’s rapids—ending in a falls.” The
officer squatted down, spreading out the strip and making stabs at
it with a nervous finger tip. “Here we have to leave. This is
all rough ground. But lying to the south there’s a gap which
may be a pass. This was made from an aerial survey.”
Shann knew enough to realize to what extent such a guide could
go wrong. Main features of the landscape would be clear enough from
aloft, but there might be insurmountable difficulties at ground
level which were not distinguishable from the air. Yet Thorvald had
planned this journey as if he had already explored their escape
route and that it was as open and easy as a stroll down Tyr’s
main transport way. Why was it so necessary that they try to reach
the sea? However, since he had no objection to voice except a
dislike for indefinite information, Shann did not question the
other’s calm assumption of command, not yet, anyway.
As they embarked and worked back into the current, Shann studied
his companion. Thorvald had freely listed the difficulties lying
before them. Yet he did not seem in the least worried about their
being able to win through to the sea—or if he was, his outer
shell of unconcern remained uncracked. Before their first day
together had ended, the younger Terran had learned that to Thorvald
he was only another tool, to be used by the Survey officer in some
project which the other believed of primary importance. And his
resentment of the valuation was under control so far. He valued
Thorvald’s knowledge, but the other’s attitude chilled
and rebuffed his need for something more than a half partnership of
work.
Why had Thorvald come back to Warlock in the first place? And
why had it been necessary for him to risk his life—perhaps
more than his life if their theory was correct concerning the
Throgs’ wish to capture a Terran—to get that set of
maps from the plundered camp? When he had first talked of that
raid, his promised loot had been supplies to fill their daily
needs; there had been no mention of maps. By all signs Thorvald was
engaged on some mission. And what would happen if he, Shann,
suddenly stopped being the other’s obedient underling and
demanded a few explanations here and now?
Only Shann knew enough about men to also know that he would not
get any information out of Thorvald that the latter was not ready
to give, and that such a show-down, coming prematurely, would only
end in his own discomfiture. He smiled wryly now, remembering his
emotions when he had first seen Ragnar Thorvald months ago. As if
the officer ever considered the likes, dislikes—or
dreams—of one Shann Lantee. No, reality and dreams seldom
approached each other. Dreams . . .
“On any of those shoreline maps,” he asked suddenly,
“do they have marked a mountain shaped like a
skull?”
Thorvald thrust with his pole. “Skull?” he repeated,
a little absently, as he so often did in answer to Shann’s
questions unless they dealt with some currently important
matter.
“A peculiar sort of skull,” Shann said. Just as
vividly as when he had first awakened, he could picture that skull
mountain with the flying things around its eye sockets. And that,
too, was odd; dream impressions usually faded with the passing of
waking hours. “It has a protruding jaw and the waves wash
that . . . red-and-purple
rock—”
“What?”
He had Thorvald’s complete attention now.
“Where did you hear about it?” That demand followed
quickly.
“I didn’t hear about it. I dreamed of it last night.
I stood there right in front of it. There were birds—or
things flying like birds—going in and out of the
eyeholes—”
“What else?” Thorvald leaned across his pole, his
eyes alive, avid, as if he would pull the reply he wanted out of
Shann by force.
“That’s all I remember—the skull
mountain.” He did not add his other impression, that he was
meant to find that skull, that he must find it.
“Nothing . . . ”
Thorvald paused, and then spoke slowly, with a visible reluctance.
“Nothing else? No cavern with a green veil—a wide green
veil—strung across it?”
Shann shook his head. “Just the skull mountain.”
Thorvald looked as if he didn’t quite believe that, but
Shann’s expression must have been convincing, for he laughed
shortly.
“Well, there goes one nice neat theory up in smoke!”
he commented. “No, your skull doesn’t appear on any of
our maps, and so probably my cavern does not exist either. They may
both be smoke screens—”
“What—?” But Shann never finished that
query.
A wind was rising in the desert to blow across the slit which
held the river, carrying with it a fine shifting of sand which
coasted down into the water as a gray haze, coating men, animals,
and raft, and sighing as snow sighs when it falls.
Only that did not drown out another cry, a thin cry, diluted by
the miles of land stretching behind them, but yet carrying that
long ululating howl they had heard in the Throg camp. Thorvald
grinned mirthlessly.
“The hound’s on trail.”
He bent to the pole, using it to aid the pace of the current.
Shann, chilled in spite of the sun’s heat, followed his
example, wondering if time had ceased to fight on their side.