The sun was a harsh ball of heat baking the
ground and then, in some odd manner, drawing back that same
fieriness. In the coolness of the eastern mountains Shann would not
have believed that Warlock could hold such heat. The men discarded
their jackets early as they swung to dip the poles. But they dared
not strip off the rest of their clothing lest their skin burn. And
again gusts of wind now drove sand over the edge of the cut to
blanket the water.
Shann wiped his eyes, pausing in his tedious push-push, to look
at the rocks which they were passing in risky proximity. For the
slash which held the river had narrowed. And the rock of its walls
was naked of earth, save for sheltered pockets holding the drift of
sand dust, while boulders of all sizes cut into the path of the
flowing water.
He had not been mistaken; they were going faster, faster even
than their efforts with the poles would account for. With the
narrowing of the bed of the stream, the current was taking on a new
swiftness. Shann said as much and Thorvald nodded.
“We’re approaching the first of the
rapids.”
“Where we get off and walk around,” Shann croaked
wearily. The dust gritted between his teeth, irritated his eyes.
“Do we stay beside the river?”
“As long as we can,” Thorvald replied somberly.
“We have no way of transporting water.”
Yes, a man could live on very slim rations of food, continue to
beat his way over a bad trail if he had the concentrate tablets
they carried. But there was no going without water, and in this
heat such an effort would finish them quickly. Always they both
listened for another cry from behind, a cry to tell them just how
near the Throg hunting party had come.
“No Throg flyers yet,” Shann observed. He had
expected one of those black plates to come cruising the moment the
hound had pointed the direction for their pursuers.
“Not in a storm such as this.” Thorvald, without
releasing his hold on the raft pole, pointed with his chin to the
swirling haze cloaking the air above the cut walls. Here the river
dug yet deeper into the beginning of a canyon. They could breathe
better. The dust still sifted down but not as thickly as a half
hour earlier. Though over their heads the sky was now a grayish
lid, shutting out the sun, bringing a portion of coolness to the
travelers.
The Survey officer glanced from side to side, watching the banks
as if hunting for some special mark or sign. At last he used his
pole as a pointer to indicate a rough pile of boulders ahead. Some
former landslide had quarter dammed the river at that point, and
the drift of seasonal floods was caught in and among the rocky pile
to form a prickly peninsula.
“In there—”
They brought the raft to shore, fighting the faster current. The
wolverines, who had been subdued by the heat and the dust, flung
themselves to the rocks with the eagerness of passengers deserting
a sinking ship for certain rescue. Thorvald settled the map case
more securely between his arm and side before he took the same
leap. When they were all ashore he prodded the raft out into the
stream again, pushing the platform along until it was sucked by the
current past the line of boulders.
“Listen!”
But Shann had already caught that distant rumble of sound. It
was steady, beating like some giant drum. Certainly it did not
herald a Throg ship in flight and it came from ahead, not from
their back trail.
“Rapids . . . perhaps even the
falls,” Thorvald interpreted that faint thunder. “Now,
let’s see what kind of a road we can find here.”
The tongue of boulders, spiked with driftwood, was firmly based
against the wall of the cut. But it sloped up to within a few feet
of the top of that gap, more than one landslide having contributed
to its fashioning. The landing stage paralleled the river for
perhaps some fifty feet. Beyond it water splashed a straight wall.
They would have to climb and follow the stream along the top of the
embankment, maybe being forced well away from the source of the
water.
By unspoken consent they both knelt and drank deeply from their
cupped hands, splashing more of the liquid over their heads,
washing the dust from their skins. Then they began to climb the
rough ascent up which the wolverines had already vanished. The murk
above them was less solid, but again the fine grit streaked their
faces, embedding itself in their hair.
Shann paused to scrape a film of mud from his lips and chin.
Then he made the last pull, bracing his slight body against the
push of the wind he met there. A palm struck hard between his
shoulders, nearly sending him sprawling. He had only wits enough
left to recognize that as an order to get on, and he staggered
ahead until rock arched over him and the sand drift was shut
off.
His shoulder met solid stone, and rubbing the sand from his
eyes, Shann realized he was in a pocket in the cliff walls. Well
overhead he caught a glimpse of natural amber sky through a slit
but here was a twilight which thickened into complete darkness.
There was no sign of the wolverines. Thorvald moved along the
pocket southward, and Shann followed him. Once more they faced a
dead end. For the crevice, with the sheer descent to the river on
the right, the cliff wall at its back, came to an abrupt halt in a
drop which caught at Shann’s stomach when he ventured to look
down.
If some battleship of the interstellar fleet had aimed a force
beam across the mountains of Warlock, cutting down to what lay
under the first layer of planet-skin, perhaps the resulting wound
might have resembled that slash. What had caused such a break
between the height on which they stood and the much taller peak
beyond, Shann could not guess. But it must have been a cataclysm of
spectacular dimensions. There was certainly no descending to the
bottom of that cut and reclimbing the rock face on the other side.
The fugitives would either have to return to the river with all its
ominous warnings of trouble to come, or find some other path across
that gap which now provided such an effective barrier to the
west.
“Down!” Just as Thorvald had pushed him out of the
murk of the dust storm into the crevice, so now did that officer
jerk Shann from his feet, forcing him to the floor of the half cave
from which they had partially emerged.
A shadow moved across the bright band of sunlit sky.
“Back!” Thorvald caught at Shann again, his greater
strength prevailing as he literally dragged the younger man into
the dusk of the crevice. And he did not pause, nor allow Shann to
do so, even when they were well under cover again. At last they
reached the dark hole in the southern wall which they had passed
earlier. And a push from Thorvald sent his companion into that.
Then a blow greater than any the Survey officer had aimed at him
struck Shann. He was hurled against a rough wall with impetus
enough to explode the air from his lungs, the ensuing pain so great
that he feared his ribs had given under that thrust. Before his
eyes fire lashed down the slit, searing him into temporary
blindness. That flash was the last thing he remembered as thick
darkness closed in, shutting him into the nothingness of
unconsciousness.
It hurt to breathe; he was slowly aware first of that pain and
then the fact that he was breathing, that he had to endure
the pain for the sake of breath. His whole body was jarred into a
dull torment as a weight pressed upon his twisted legs. Then strong
animal breath puffed into his face. Shann lifted one hand by will
power, touched thick fur, felt the rasp of a tongue laid wetly
across his fingers.
Something close to terror engulfed him for a second or two when
he knew that he could not see! The black about him was colored by
jagged flashes of red which he somehow guessed were actually inside
his eyes. He groped through that fire-pierced darkness. An animal
whimper from the throat of the shaggy body pressed against him; he
answered that movement.
“Taggi?”
The shove against him was almost enough to pin him once more to
the wall, a painful crush on his aching ribs, as the wolverine
responded to his name. That second nudge from the other side must
be Togi’s bid for attention.
But what had happened? Thorvald had hurled him back just after
that shadow had swung over the ledge. That shadow! Shann’s
wits quickened as he tried to make sense of what he could remember.
A Throg ship! Then that fiery lash which had cut after them could
only have resulted from one of those energy bolts such as had wiped
out the others of his kind at the camp. But he was still
alive—!
“Thorvald?” He called through his personal darkness.
When there was no answer, Shann called again, more urgently. Then
he hunched forward on his hands and knees, pushing Taggi gently
aside, running his hands over projecting rocks, uneven
flooring.
His fingers touched what could only be cloth, before they met
the warmth of flesh. And he half threw himself against the supine
body of the Survey officer, groping awkwardly for heartbeat, for
some sign that the other was still living.
“What—?” The one word came thickly, but Shann
gave something close to a sob of relief as he caught the faint
mutter. He squatted back on his heels, pressed his forearm against
his aching eyes in a kind of fierce will to see.
Perhaps that pressure did relieve some of the blackout, for when
he blinked again, the complete dark and the fiery trails had faded
to gray, and he was sure he saw dimly a source of light to his
left.
The Throg ship had fired upon them. But the aliens could not
have used the full force of their weapon or neither of the Terrans
would still be alive. Which meant, Shann’s thoughts began to
make sense—sense which brought apprehension—the Throgs
probably intended to disable rather than kill. They wanted
prisoners, just as Thorvald had warned.
How long did the Terrans have before the aliens would come to
collect them? There was no fit landing place hereabouts for their
flyer. The beetle-heads would have to set down at the edge of the
desert land and climb the mountains on foot. And the Throgs were
not good at that. So, the fugitives still had a measure of
time.
Time to do what? The country itself held them securely captive.
That drop to the southwest was one barrier. To retreat eastward
would mean running straight into the hands of the hunters. To
descend again to the river, their raft gone, was worse than
useless. There was only this side pocket in which they sheltered.
And once the Throgs arrived, they could scoop the Terrans out at
their leisure, perhaps while stunned by a controlling energy
beam.
“Taggi? Togi?” Shann was suddenly aware that he had
not heard the wolverines for some time.
He was answered by a weirdly muffled call—from the south!
Had the animals found a new exit? Was this niche more than just a
niche? A cave of some length, or even a passage running back into
the interior of the peaks? With that faint hope spurring him, Shann
bent again over Thorvald, not able to make out the other’s
huddled form. Then he drew the torch from the inner loop of his
coat and pressed the lowest stud.
His eyes smarted in answer to that light, watered until tears
patterned the grime and dust on his cheeks. But he could make out
what lay before them, a hole leading into the cliff face, the hole
which might furnish the door to escape.
The Survey officer moved, levering himself up, his eyes screwed
tightly shut.
“Lantee?”
“Here. And there’s a tunnel—right behind you.
The wolverines went that
way . . . ”
To his surprise there was a thin ghost of a smile on
Thorvald’s usually straight-lipped mouth. “And
we’d better be away before visitors arrive?”
So he, too, must have thought his way through the sequence of
past action to the same conclusion concerning the Throg
movements.
“Can you see, Lantee?” The question was painfully
casual, but a note in it, almost a reaching for reassurance, cut
for the first time through the wall which had stood between them
from their chance meeting by the wrecked ship.
“Better now. I couldn’t when I first came to,”
Shann answered quickly.
Thorvald opened his eyes, but Shann guessed that he was as blind
as he himself had been. He caught at the officer’s nearer
hand, drawing it to rest on his own belt.
“Grab hold!” Shann was giving the orders now.
“By the look of that opening we had better try crawling.
I’ve a torch on at low—”
“Good enough.” The other’s fingers fumbled on
the band about Shann’s slim waist until they gripped tight at
his back. He started on into the opening, drawing Thorvald by that
hold with him.
Luckily, they did not have to crawl far, for shortly past the
entrance the fault or vein they were following became a passage
high enough for even the tall Thorvald to travel without stooping.
And then only a little later he released his hold on Shann,
reporting he could now see well enough to manage on his own.
The torch beam caught on a wall and awoke from there a glitter
which hurt their eyes—a green-gold cluster of crystals.
Several feet on, there was another flash of embedded crystals.
Those might promise priceless wealth, but neither Terran paused to
examine them more closely or touch their surfaces. From time to
time Shann whistled. And always he was answered by the wolverines,
their calls coming from ahead. So the men continued to hope that
they were not walking into a trap from which the Throgs could
extract them.
“Snap off your torch a moment!” Thorvald
ordered.
Shann obeyed. The subdued light vanished. Yet there was still
light to be seen—ahead and above.
“Front door,” Thorvald observed. “How do we
get up?”
The torch showed them that, a narrow ladder of ledges branching
off when the passage they followed took a turn to the left and
east. Afterward Shann remembered that climb with wonder that they
had actually made it, though their advance had been slow, passing
the torch from one to another to make sure of their footing.
Shann was top man when a last spurt of effort enabled him to
draw himself out into the open, his hands raw, his nails broken and
torn. He sat there, stupefied with his own weariness, to stare
about.
Thorvald called impatiently, and Shann reached for the torch to
hold it for the officer. Then Thorvald crawled out; he, too, looked
around in dull surprise.
On either side, peaks cut high into the amber of the sky. But
this bowl in which the men had found refuge was rich in growing
things. Though the trees were stunted, the grass grew almost as
high here as it did on the meadows of the lowlands. Quartering the
pocket valley, galloped the wolverines, expressing in that wild
activity their delight in this freedom.
“Good campsite.”
Thorvald shook his head. “We can’t stay
here.”
And, to underline that gloomy prophecy, there issued from that
hole through which they had just come, muffled and broken, but
still threatening, the howl of the Throgs’ hound.
The Survey officer caught the torch from Shann’s hold and
knelt to flash it into the interior of the passage. As the beam
slowly circled that opening, he held out his other arm, measuring
the size of the aperture.
“When that things gets on a hot scent”—he
snapped off the beam—“the beetle-heads won’t be
able to control it. There will be no reason for them to attempt to.
Those hounds obey their first orders: kill or capture. And I think
this one operates on ‘capture.’ So they’ll loose
it to run ahead of their party.”
“And we move to knock it out?” Shann relied now on
the other’s experience.
Thorvald rose. “It would need a blaster on full power to
finish off a hound. No, we can’t kill it. But we can make it
a doorkeeper to our advantage.” He trotted down into the
valley, Shann beside him without understanding in the least, but
aware that Thorvald did have some plan. The officer bent, searched
the ground, and began to pull from under the loose surface dirt one
of those nets of tough vines which they had used for cords. He
thrust a double handful of this hasty harvest into Shann’s
hold with a single curt order: “Twist these together and make
as thick a rope as you can!”
Shann twisted, discovering to his pleased surprise that under
pressure the vines exuded a sticky purple sap which not only coated
his hands, but also acted as an adhesive for the vines themselves
so that his task was not nearly as formidable as it had first
seemed. With his force ax Thorvald cut down two of the stunted pine
trees and stripped them of branches, wedging the poles into the
rocks about the entrance of the hole.
They were working against time, but on Thorvald’s part
with practiced efficiency. Twice more that cry of the hunter arose
from the depths behind them. As the westering sun, almost down now,
shone into the valley hollow Thorvald set up the frame of his
trap.
“We can’t knock it out, any more than we can knock
out a Throg. But a beam from a stunner ought to slow it up long
enough for this to work.”
Taggi burst out of the grass, approaching the hole with purpose.
And Togi was right at his heels. Both of them stared into that
opening, drooling a little, the same eagerness in their pose as
they had displayed when hunting. Shann remembered how that first
howl of the Throg hound had drawn both animals to the edge of the
occupied camp in spite of their marked distaste for its alien
masters.
“They’re after it too.” He told Thorvald what
he had noted on the night of their sortie.
“Maybe they can keep it occupied,” the other
commented. “But we don’t want them to actually mix with
it; that might be fatal.”
A clamor broke out in the interior passage. Taggi snarled,
backing away a few steps before he uttered his own war cry.
“Ready!” Thorvald jumped to the net slung from the
poles; Shann raised his stunner.
Togi underlined her mate’s challenge with a series of
snarls rising in volume. There was a tearing, scrambling sound from
within. Then Shann fired at the jack-in-the-box appearance of a
monstrous head, and Thorvald released the deadfall.
The thing squalled. Ropes beat, growing taut. The wolverines
backed from jaws which snapped fruitlessly. To Shann’s relief
the Terran animals appeared content to bait the now
imprisoned—or collared—horror, without venturing to
make any close attack.
But he reckoned that too soon. Perhaps the stunner had slowed up
the hound’s reflexes, for those jaws stilled with a last
shattering snap, the toad-lizard mask—a head which was
against all nature as the Terrans knew it—was quiet in the
strangle leash of the rope, the rest of the body serving as a cork
to fill the exit hole. Taggi had been waiting only for such a
chance. He sprang, claws ready. And Togi went in after her mate to
share the battle.
The sun was a harsh ball of heat baking the
ground and then, in some odd manner, drawing back that same
fieriness. In the coolness of the eastern mountains Shann would not
have believed that Warlock could hold such heat. The men discarded
their jackets early as they swung to dip the poles. But they dared
not strip off the rest of their clothing lest their skin burn. And
again gusts of wind now drove sand over the edge of the cut to
blanket the water.
Shann wiped his eyes, pausing in his tedious push-push, to look
at the rocks which they were passing in risky proximity. For the
slash which held the river had narrowed. And the rock of its walls
was naked of earth, save for sheltered pockets holding the drift of
sand dust, while boulders of all sizes cut into the path of the
flowing water.
He had not been mistaken; they were going faster, faster even
than their efforts with the poles would account for. With the
narrowing of the bed of the stream, the current was taking on a new
swiftness. Shann said as much and Thorvald nodded.
“We’re approaching the first of the
rapids.”
“Where we get off and walk around,” Shann croaked
wearily. The dust gritted between his teeth, irritated his eyes.
“Do we stay beside the river?”
“As long as we can,” Thorvald replied somberly.
“We have no way of transporting water.”
Yes, a man could live on very slim rations of food, continue to
beat his way over a bad trail if he had the concentrate tablets
they carried. But there was no going without water, and in this
heat such an effort would finish them quickly. Always they both
listened for another cry from behind, a cry to tell them just how
near the Throg hunting party had come.
“No Throg flyers yet,” Shann observed. He had
expected one of those black plates to come cruising the moment the
hound had pointed the direction for their pursuers.
“Not in a storm such as this.” Thorvald, without
releasing his hold on the raft pole, pointed with his chin to the
swirling haze cloaking the air above the cut walls. Here the river
dug yet deeper into the beginning of a canyon. They could breathe
better. The dust still sifted down but not as thickly as a half
hour earlier. Though over their heads the sky was now a grayish
lid, shutting out the sun, bringing a portion of coolness to the
travelers.
The Survey officer glanced from side to side, watching the banks
as if hunting for some special mark or sign. At last he used his
pole as a pointer to indicate a rough pile of boulders ahead. Some
former landslide had quarter dammed the river at that point, and
the drift of seasonal floods was caught in and among the rocky pile
to form a prickly peninsula.
“In there—”
They brought the raft to shore, fighting the faster current. The
wolverines, who had been subdued by the heat and the dust, flung
themselves to the rocks with the eagerness of passengers deserting
a sinking ship for certain rescue. Thorvald settled the map case
more securely between his arm and side before he took the same
leap. When they were all ashore he prodded the raft out into the
stream again, pushing the platform along until it was sucked by the
current past the line of boulders.
“Listen!”
But Shann had already caught that distant rumble of sound. It
was steady, beating like some giant drum. Certainly it did not
herald a Throg ship in flight and it came from ahead, not from
their back trail.
“Rapids . . . perhaps even the
falls,” Thorvald interpreted that faint thunder. “Now,
let’s see what kind of a road we can find here.”
The tongue of boulders, spiked with driftwood, was firmly based
against the wall of the cut. But it sloped up to within a few feet
of the top of that gap, more than one landslide having contributed
to its fashioning. The landing stage paralleled the river for
perhaps some fifty feet. Beyond it water splashed a straight wall.
They would have to climb and follow the stream along the top of the
embankment, maybe being forced well away from the source of the
water.
By unspoken consent they both knelt and drank deeply from their
cupped hands, splashing more of the liquid over their heads,
washing the dust from their skins. Then they began to climb the
rough ascent up which the wolverines had already vanished. The murk
above them was less solid, but again the fine grit streaked their
faces, embedding itself in their hair.
Shann paused to scrape a film of mud from his lips and chin.
Then he made the last pull, bracing his slight body against the
push of the wind he met there. A palm struck hard between his
shoulders, nearly sending him sprawling. He had only wits enough
left to recognize that as an order to get on, and he staggered
ahead until rock arched over him and the sand drift was shut
off.
His shoulder met solid stone, and rubbing the sand from his
eyes, Shann realized he was in a pocket in the cliff walls. Well
overhead he caught a glimpse of natural amber sky through a slit
but here was a twilight which thickened into complete darkness.
There was no sign of the wolverines. Thorvald moved along the
pocket southward, and Shann followed him. Once more they faced a
dead end. For the crevice, with the sheer descent to the river on
the right, the cliff wall at its back, came to an abrupt halt in a
drop which caught at Shann’s stomach when he ventured to look
down.
If some battleship of the interstellar fleet had aimed a force
beam across the mountains of Warlock, cutting down to what lay
under the first layer of planet-skin, perhaps the resulting wound
might have resembled that slash. What had caused such a break
between the height on which they stood and the much taller peak
beyond, Shann could not guess. But it must have been a cataclysm of
spectacular dimensions. There was certainly no descending to the
bottom of that cut and reclimbing the rock face on the other side.
The fugitives would either have to return to the river with all its
ominous warnings of trouble to come, or find some other path across
that gap which now provided such an effective barrier to the
west.
“Down!” Just as Thorvald had pushed him out of the
murk of the dust storm into the crevice, so now did that officer
jerk Shann from his feet, forcing him to the floor of the half cave
from which they had partially emerged.
A shadow moved across the bright band of sunlit sky.
“Back!” Thorvald caught at Shann again, his greater
strength prevailing as he literally dragged the younger man into
the dusk of the crevice. And he did not pause, nor allow Shann to
do so, even when they were well under cover again. At last they
reached the dark hole in the southern wall which they had passed
earlier. And a push from Thorvald sent his companion into that.
Then a blow greater than any the Survey officer had aimed at him
struck Shann. He was hurled against a rough wall with impetus
enough to explode the air from his lungs, the ensuing pain so great
that he feared his ribs had given under that thrust. Before his
eyes fire lashed down the slit, searing him into temporary
blindness. That flash was the last thing he remembered as thick
darkness closed in, shutting him into the nothingness of
unconsciousness.
It hurt to breathe; he was slowly aware first of that pain and
then the fact that he was breathing, that he had to endure
the pain for the sake of breath. His whole body was jarred into a
dull torment as a weight pressed upon his twisted legs. Then strong
animal breath puffed into his face. Shann lifted one hand by will
power, touched thick fur, felt the rasp of a tongue laid wetly
across his fingers.
Something close to terror engulfed him for a second or two when
he knew that he could not see! The black about him was colored by
jagged flashes of red which he somehow guessed were actually inside
his eyes. He groped through that fire-pierced darkness. An animal
whimper from the throat of the shaggy body pressed against him; he
answered that movement.
“Taggi?”
The shove against him was almost enough to pin him once more to
the wall, a painful crush on his aching ribs, as the wolverine
responded to his name. That second nudge from the other side must
be Togi’s bid for attention.
But what had happened? Thorvald had hurled him back just after
that shadow had swung over the ledge. That shadow! Shann’s
wits quickened as he tried to make sense of what he could remember.
A Throg ship! Then that fiery lash which had cut after them could
only have resulted from one of those energy bolts such as had wiped
out the others of his kind at the camp. But he was still
alive—!
“Thorvald?” He called through his personal darkness.
When there was no answer, Shann called again, more urgently. Then
he hunched forward on his hands and knees, pushing Taggi gently
aside, running his hands over projecting rocks, uneven
flooring.
His fingers touched what could only be cloth, before they met
the warmth of flesh. And he half threw himself against the supine
body of the Survey officer, groping awkwardly for heartbeat, for
some sign that the other was still living.
“What—?” The one word came thickly, but Shann
gave something close to a sob of relief as he caught the faint
mutter. He squatted back on his heels, pressed his forearm against
his aching eyes in a kind of fierce will to see.
Perhaps that pressure did relieve some of the blackout, for when
he blinked again, the complete dark and the fiery trails had faded
to gray, and he was sure he saw dimly a source of light to his
left.
The Throg ship had fired upon them. But the aliens could not
have used the full force of their weapon or neither of the Terrans
would still be alive. Which meant, Shann’s thoughts began to
make sense—sense which brought apprehension—the Throgs
probably intended to disable rather than kill. They wanted
prisoners, just as Thorvald had warned.
How long did the Terrans have before the aliens would come to
collect them? There was no fit landing place hereabouts for their
flyer. The beetle-heads would have to set down at the edge of the
desert land and climb the mountains on foot. And the Throgs were
not good at that. So, the fugitives still had a measure of
time.
Time to do what? The country itself held them securely captive.
That drop to the southwest was one barrier. To retreat eastward
would mean running straight into the hands of the hunters. To
descend again to the river, their raft gone, was worse than
useless. There was only this side pocket in which they sheltered.
And once the Throgs arrived, they could scoop the Terrans out at
their leisure, perhaps while stunned by a controlling energy
beam.
“Taggi? Togi?” Shann was suddenly aware that he had
not heard the wolverines for some time.
He was answered by a weirdly muffled call—from the south!
Had the animals found a new exit? Was this niche more than just a
niche? A cave of some length, or even a passage running back into
the interior of the peaks? With that faint hope spurring him, Shann
bent again over Thorvald, not able to make out the other’s
huddled form. Then he drew the torch from the inner loop of his
coat and pressed the lowest stud.
His eyes smarted in answer to that light, watered until tears
patterned the grime and dust on his cheeks. But he could make out
what lay before them, a hole leading into the cliff face, the hole
which might furnish the door to escape.
The Survey officer moved, levering himself up, his eyes screwed
tightly shut.
“Lantee?”
“Here. And there’s a tunnel—right behind you.
The wolverines went that
way . . . ”
To his surprise there was a thin ghost of a smile on
Thorvald’s usually straight-lipped mouth. “And
we’d better be away before visitors arrive?”
So he, too, must have thought his way through the sequence of
past action to the same conclusion concerning the Throg
movements.
“Can you see, Lantee?” The question was painfully
casual, but a note in it, almost a reaching for reassurance, cut
for the first time through the wall which had stood between them
from their chance meeting by the wrecked ship.
“Better now. I couldn’t when I first came to,”
Shann answered quickly.
Thorvald opened his eyes, but Shann guessed that he was as blind
as he himself had been. He caught at the officer’s nearer
hand, drawing it to rest on his own belt.
“Grab hold!” Shann was giving the orders now.
“By the look of that opening we had better try crawling.
I’ve a torch on at low—”
“Good enough.” The other’s fingers fumbled on
the band about Shann’s slim waist until they gripped tight at
his back. He started on into the opening, drawing Thorvald by that
hold with him.
Luckily, they did not have to crawl far, for shortly past the
entrance the fault or vein they were following became a passage
high enough for even the tall Thorvald to travel without stooping.
And then only a little later he released his hold on Shann,
reporting he could now see well enough to manage on his own.
The torch beam caught on a wall and awoke from there a glitter
which hurt their eyes—a green-gold cluster of crystals.
Several feet on, there was another flash of embedded crystals.
Those might promise priceless wealth, but neither Terran paused to
examine them more closely or touch their surfaces. From time to
time Shann whistled. And always he was answered by the wolverines,
their calls coming from ahead. So the men continued to hope that
they were not walking into a trap from which the Throgs could
extract them.
“Snap off your torch a moment!” Thorvald
ordered.
Shann obeyed. The subdued light vanished. Yet there was still
light to be seen—ahead and above.
“Front door,” Thorvald observed. “How do we
get up?”
The torch showed them that, a narrow ladder of ledges branching
off when the passage they followed took a turn to the left and
east. Afterward Shann remembered that climb with wonder that they
had actually made it, though their advance had been slow, passing
the torch from one to another to make sure of their footing.
Shann was top man when a last spurt of effort enabled him to
draw himself out into the open, his hands raw, his nails broken and
torn. He sat there, stupefied with his own weariness, to stare
about.
Thorvald called impatiently, and Shann reached for the torch to
hold it for the officer. Then Thorvald crawled out; he, too, looked
around in dull surprise.
On either side, peaks cut high into the amber of the sky. But
this bowl in which the men had found refuge was rich in growing
things. Though the trees were stunted, the grass grew almost as
high here as it did on the meadows of the lowlands. Quartering the
pocket valley, galloped the wolverines, expressing in that wild
activity their delight in this freedom.
“Good campsite.”
Thorvald shook his head. “We can’t stay
here.”
And, to underline that gloomy prophecy, there issued from that
hole through which they had just come, muffled and broken, but
still threatening, the howl of the Throgs’ hound.
The Survey officer caught the torch from Shann’s hold and
knelt to flash it into the interior of the passage. As the beam
slowly circled that opening, he held out his other arm, measuring
the size of the aperture.
“When that things gets on a hot scent”—he
snapped off the beam—“the beetle-heads won’t be
able to control it. There will be no reason for them to attempt to.
Those hounds obey their first orders: kill or capture. And I think
this one operates on ‘capture.’ So they’ll loose
it to run ahead of their party.”
“And we move to knock it out?” Shann relied now on
the other’s experience.
Thorvald rose. “It would need a blaster on full power to
finish off a hound. No, we can’t kill it. But we can make it
a doorkeeper to our advantage.” He trotted down into the
valley, Shann beside him without understanding in the least, but
aware that Thorvald did have some plan. The officer bent, searched
the ground, and began to pull from under the loose surface dirt one
of those nets of tough vines which they had used for cords. He
thrust a double handful of this hasty harvest into Shann’s
hold with a single curt order: “Twist these together and make
as thick a rope as you can!”
Shann twisted, discovering to his pleased surprise that under
pressure the vines exuded a sticky purple sap which not only coated
his hands, but also acted as an adhesive for the vines themselves
so that his task was not nearly as formidable as it had first
seemed. With his force ax Thorvald cut down two of the stunted pine
trees and stripped them of branches, wedging the poles into the
rocks about the entrance of the hole.
They were working against time, but on Thorvald’s part
with practiced efficiency. Twice more that cry of the hunter arose
from the depths behind them. As the westering sun, almost down now,
shone into the valley hollow Thorvald set up the frame of his
trap.
“We can’t knock it out, any more than we can knock
out a Throg. But a beam from a stunner ought to slow it up long
enough for this to work.”
Taggi burst out of the grass, approaching the hole with purpose.
And Togi was right at his heels. Both of them stared into that
opening, drooling a little, the same eagerness in their pose as
they had displayed when hunting. Shann remembered how that first
howl of the Throg hound had drawn both animals to the edge of the
occupied camp in spite of their marked distaste for its alien
masters.
“They’re after it too.” He told Thorvald what
he had noted on the night of their sortie.
“Maybe they can keep it occupied,” the other
commented. “But we don’t want them to actually mix with
it; that might be fatal.”
A clamor broke out in the interior passage. Taggi snarled,
backing away a few steps before he uttered his own war cry.
“Ready!” Thorvald jumped to the net slung from the
poles; Shann raised his stunner.
Togi underlined her mate’s challenge with a series of
snarls rising in volume. There was a tearing, scrambling sound from
within. Then Shann fired at the jack-in-the-box appearance of a
monstrous head, and Thorvald released the deadfall.
The thing squalled. Ropes beat, growing taut. The wolverines
backed from jaws which snapped fruitlessly. To Shann’s relief
the Terran animals appeared content to bait the now
imprisoned—or collared—horror, without venturing to
make any close attack.
But he reckoned that too soon. Perhaps the stunner had slowed up
the hound’s reflexes, for those jaws stilled with a last
shattering snap, the toad-lizard mask—a head which was
against all nature as the Terrans knew it—was quiet in the
strangle leash of the rope, the rest of the body serving as a cork
to fill the exit hole. Taggi had been waiting only for such a
chance. He sprang, claws ready. And Togi went in after her mate to
share the battle.