“We are followed,” Eet informed
me.
“The fisherman?”
“Or one of his kind.” My companion did nothing to
relieve my mind with that report. “But he is cautious—he
fears—”
“What?” I demanded bitterly. “This knife is no
adequate defense, except at close quarters. And I have no desire to
stand up to him as might a Korkosan gladiator. I am no fighter,
only a peaceful gem trader.”
Eet disregarded most of my sour protest. “He fears
death-from-a-distance. He has witnessed such—or knows of
it.”
Death from a distance? That could mean anything from a thrown
spear or slingshot propelled rock, to a laser beam, and all the
grades of possible “civilization” in between.
“Just so.” Eet had picked up my thought. “But,
” I caught a suggestion of puzzlement. “I can read no
more, only that he fears and so sniffs us prudently.”
We holed up in a mass of drift thrust into a corner between two
downed trees, eating from our supply of seeds, drinking from the
ship’s flask. The seeds might be nutritious, but they did not
allay my need for something less monotonous. And I had seen none of
them growing since we had come into the dripping country, so that I
rationed carefully what we had. As I chewed my handful, I watched
our back trail for any sign of a tracker.
I sighted him at last. He had gone down on one knee, his head
almost touching the ground as that trunk-like, mobile nose of his
quivered and twisted above my tracks. If it was not the fisherman,
it was one enough like him to be his twin.
After a long sniffing, he squatted back on his heels, his head
raised, that trunk standing almost straight out from its roots as
he turned his head slowly. I fully expected him to point directly
at us, and I readied my knife desperately.
But there was no halt in that swing. If he did know where we
were, he was cunning enough to guess we might be alert, and did not
betray his discovery. I waited tensely for him to arise and charge,
or to disappear into the brush in an attempt to circle around for
an ambush.
“He does not know, he still seeks—” Eet said.
“But—if he sniffed out our trail, how could he miss
scenting us now?”
“I do not know. Only that he still seeks. Also he is
afraid. He does not like—”
“What?” I demanded when Eet paused.
“It is too hard, I cannot read. This one feels more than
he thinks. One can read thoughts, and the cruder emotions. But his
breed is new to me; I cannot gain more than surface
impressions.”
At any rate, though my trail led directly from where the sniffer
now squatted, he made no attempt to advance. Whether I could leave
the cover we had taken refuge in without attracting attention, I
did not know.
Two trees, not the huge giants of the forest, but ones of
respectable girth, had fallen so that their branched crowns met,
their trunks lying at right angles. We were in the corner formed by
the branched part, a screen of drift piled not too thickly between
us and the native.
I saw that the branches were bleached, leafless, but matted
together. Yet the stone pulled me toward them, as if it would have
me go through that mass. I hunched down and began to saw away at
the obstructions. Eet was there, his forepaws at work, snapping off
smaller pieces, while I dug with the point of the knife in the soft
earth under the heavier branches. We moved very slowly, pausing
many times to survey the open ground between us and the sniffer. To
my surprise, for I knew we were far from noiseless (in spite of our
best efforts), he did not appear and Eet reported he had not
moved.
It suddenly occurred to me, with a chill, what his purpose might
be—that he was not alone, and that when his reinforcements moved
into place there would be a charge after all.
“You are right.” Eet was no comforter. “There
is one, perhaps two more, coming—”
“Why did you not tell me?”
“Had it been necessary I would have. But why add to
apprehension when a clear mind is needful? They are yet some
distance away. It is a pity, but the day is almost gone. To them, I
believe, night is no problem.”
I did not put my thoughts into words; Eet could read them well
enough anyway. “Are there any in front of us?” I bit
back and curbed my anger.
“None within my sensing range. They do not like that
direction. This one waits for the others’ coming, not because
he fears us, but because he fears where we head. His fear grows
stronger as he waits.”
“Then—let us get farther ahead—” I no longer tried
to be so careful, but slashed at branches, cutting our way through
the springy wall in quick blows.
“Well spoken,” Eet agreed. “Always supposing
we do not run from one danger into a greater one.”
I made no reply to that, but hoped that Eet was reading my
emotions and that they would scorch him. Beyond the trees were more
of the scum-rimmed pools, fallen trunks. But the latter provided us
with a road of sorts. The fisherman had been armed with nothing
more lethal than a club, which he could not use at a distance. He
knew we fled, and it seemed to me that speed was now in order.
With Eet back on my shoulders, his paw-hands gripping the ties
of my pack, I sprang onto the nearest trunk and ran, leaping from
one to the next, not in a straight line, but always in the
direction the stone pointed me. For I could not help but hope that
it would guide me to some installation, or ship, perhaps even a
settlement of those who had owned the ring, even as it had brought
us across space to the derelict. The great age of that ship,
however, suggested I would find no living community.
We were out of the gloom. Not only had the flood cut a swath
among the trees, but the secondary growth had been undermined and
was scanty. Now I could see the sky overhead.
But that was full of clouds, and while it was still warm enough
to make one pant when exercising, there was no sun. Insects buzzed
about, so that at times I had to swing my hand before my face to
clear my vision. But none bit my flesh. Perhaps I was so alien to
their usual source of nourishment that they could not.
There was no sign of any pursuit, and Eet, though he had ceased
to communicate when we began this dash, would, I believed, raise
the warning if it were needed. I appeared to possess some
importance to him, though his evasiveness concerning that bothered
me.
Again pools began to link together, forcing me to make more and
more detours from the direct path the stone indicated. I had no
wish to splash through even the shallows of those evil-looking,
bescummed floods. Who knew what might hide below their foul
surfaces? Perhaps the insects did not find me tasty, but that did
not mean other native life would be so fastidious.
I had no idea of the length of the planetary day, but it seemed
to me now that the cloud blanket overhead did not account for all
the lack of light and that this might be late afternoon. Before
night we must find some safe place in which to hole up. If the
natives were nocturnal, the advantage of any encounter would rest
with them.
The water pushed me back, farther and farther to the right,
while the tug of the stone was now left, straight into the watery
region. Its pull became so acute and constant that I finally had to
slip the loop from my hand and put it back in the pouch, lest it
overbalance me into one of the very sinks I fought to skirt.
There was much evidence that not only had this lake been far
larger in the not too far-distant past but it was still draining
away in the very direction the ring pointed. It was hard going and
from time to time I demanded of Eet reassurance that we were not
being followed. But each time he reported all clear.
It was decidedly darker and I had yet found no possible place to
lie up for the night. Too many tracks in the mud suggested that
life, large life, crawled from pond to lake, came from the water
and returned to it. And the size of some of those tracks was enough
to make a man think twice, three, a dozen times, before settling
down near their roadways.
I had passed the first of the outcrops before I really noticed
them, so covered were they with dried mud which afforded anchorage
to growing things. It was when I scrambled up on one to try for a
better look at what might lie ahead that it dawned on me that they
were not scattered without pattern but were set in a line which
could not be that of nature alone.
My foot slipped on the surface and I slid forward, trying to
stop my fall by digging the point of the knife well in. But the
stone resisted my blade, which came away with an almost metallic
sound, scraping off a huge patch of mud.
What I had uncovered was not rough stone, but a smooth surface
which had been artificially finished. When I touched it I could not
be sure it was stone at all. It had a sleekness, almost as if the
rock had been fused into a glassy overcoat—though in places this
was scaled and pitted.
In color it was dull green, veined with ocher strata. Yet it was
not part of a wall, for the stones did not abut, but had several
paces distance between them. Perhaps there had once been some link
of another material now vanished.
The outcrops ran in the direction the stone urged upon me,
marching down to the lake, partially submerged near the shore,
water lapping their crowns farther out, then entirely covered.
As I continued along the lake, now alert to any other evidence,
I came across a second line of blocks, paralleling those swallowed
by the water. These I took for a guide. They were certainly the
remains of some large erection, ancient though they appeared. And
as such they could well lead to a building, or even a ruin which
would shelter us.
“Just so,” Eet agreed. “But it would be well
to hurry faster. Night will come soon under these clouds and I
think a storm also. If more water feeds this lake—”
There was no need for him to underline his thought. I jumped
from one of those blocks half buried in the muck to the next,
listening for warning thunder (if storms on this planet were
accompanied by such warnings) and fearing to feel the first drops
of rain. The wind was growing stronger and it brought with it a low
wailing which stopped me short until Eet’s reassurance
came:
“That is not the voice of a living thing—only
sound—” He sniffed as thoroughly as the trunk-nosed
native.
The blocks for the first time now were joined together, rising
into a wall, and I dropped down to walk beside it. It soon topped
my head. There were too many shadows in its overhang, so I edged
into the open.
I would have climbed again after a while for a better look at
the country ahead, but the tops of these blocks were not level.
Instead they were crowned with projections, the original form of
which could not be guessed, for they were eroded and worn to stubs
which pricked from them at meaningless angles.
On this side of the wall the signs of flood ceased, except in
some places where apparently waves had spilled over the top, in a
few instances actually turning and twisting the mighty blocks of
the coping over which they had beaten.
There were no trees here. We moved across an open space which
gave footing only to brush that did not grow high. Where one of the
waves had topped the wall, I saw that I walked on a coating of soil
overlying pavement, some of which had the same fused look as the
surface of the wall.
If I walked some road or courtyard, there was no other wall. The
clouds were very thick and dark now, and the first pattering rain
began. The wall was no protection, nor was there any other shelter
in this sparsely grown land. I ran on, my tiring body having to be
forced to that pace, both my pack and Eet weighing cruelly on
me.
Then the wall beside which I jogged made a sharp turn left and
ended in a three-sided enclosure. It had no roof, but those three
sides were the best protection I had seen. We could stretch the
shelter from the wreck over us to afford some cover. Also, I was
not going to blunder on in the dark. So I darted into that
enclosure, squatting down in the corner I judged easiest to defend.
There we huddled, the covering draped over my head and shoulders,
Eet in my lap, as the night and the storm closed down upon us.
But we were not quite in the dark. As I changed position I saw
the faintest of glows from the pouch which held the stone, and when
I pried open the top a fraction, there was a thin ray of light.
Just as it had come alive before, so it was registering energy now.
Was this ruin its goal? If so, had the LB led us directly to the
home planet from which the derelict had lifted eons ago? Such a
supposition could not be ruled out as fantastic. The LB could have
been set on a homing device and the drifting ship might have met
its fate soon after take-off. Unwittingly we might have made a full
circle, returning the ring to the world on which it was fashioned.
But the age of the stones at my back certainly argued that those
who had dwelt here were long gone, that I had stumbled on traces of
one of the Forerunner races, about whom we know so little and even
the Zacathans can only speculate.
To spend a stormy night amid alien ruins of incalculable age was
not my idea of a well-chosen pastime. My search for gems had taken
me into many strange places, but then I had only been second to
Vondar, leaning on his knowledge and experience. And earlier I had
looked to my father, not only for physical protection, but for that
teaching which would aid in survival.
As I crouched there with the rain drumming on the thin sheet
which was my only roof, I was only partially aware of the night,
the alien walls, the need for alertness. One part of my mind sought
back down the years, to my father’s first showing of the ring
with the zero stone—for that was what he had once termed it, a
challenge to his knowledge and curiosity.
It had been found on a suited body floating in space. Had that
body been one of the crew of the derelict? And my father had died
at the hands of someone who had then searched his office, the zero
stone the prize the murderer sought.
Then Vondar Ustle and I had been entrapped at the inn on Tanth.
And I could accept that that had not happened by a chance pointing
of the selective arrow. It had been planned. Perhaps they had
believed that, being off-worlders, we would resist the priests just
as we had, and both be slain, as Vondar was. They could not have
foreseen that I would break away and reach the sanctuary.
For the first time I resented my bargain with Ostrend. And the
trader in me regretted the gems I had paid for a passage which had
already been arranged by another. So—I was to have been
transported to Waystar and turned over there to those paying for my
rescue. For what purpose? Because I was my father’s son, or
his reputed son, and so might have possession of, or knowledge of,
that very thing which now glowed faintly against my chest?
Again by chance I had escaped—the fever—a contagion picked up
on Tanth, or on that unnamed world where the people had so
mysteriously disappeared? That sickness which had so oddly struck
just at the proper time—Oddly struck!
“Just so,” Eet answered with his favorite words of
agreement. “Just so. You alone of the crew sickening so—why
did it take you so long to wonder about that?”
“But why? I know Valcyr picked my cabin to give birth—
that must have been chance—”
“Was it?”
“But you could not have—” What if he could? As
helpless as Eet’s body had looked when I found Valcyr with
him on the bunk, did that necessarily mean that his mind—?
“You are beginning to think,” Eet replied
approvingly. “There was a natural affinity operating between
us even then. The crew of the ship were a close-knit clan. It was
necessary for me to find one detached from that organization, one
who could furnish me with what I needed most at that time,
protection and transportation away from danger while I was in a
weak state. Had I encountered them at a later period I would not
have been so endangered. But I needed a partner—”
“So you made me ill!”
“A slight alteration of certain body fluids. No danger,
though it appeared so.” There was a complacency in his answer
which for a moment made me want to hurl Eet out into the dark and
whatever danger might lurk there.
“But you will not,” he answered my not completely
formulated thought. “It was not only a matter of expediency
which made me choose to reveal myself to you. I spoke of natural
affinities. There is a tie between us based on far more than
temporary needs. As I have said, this body I now wear is not,
perhaps, what I might have chosen for this particular phase of my
existence. I have modified it as much as I can for now. Perhaps
there will be other possible alterations in the future, given time
and means. But I do have senses which aid you. Just as your bulk
and strength do me. I believe you have already discovered some of
the advantages of such a partnership.
“We are still far from any situation you may term safe.
And our alliance is very necessary to both of us. Afterward we can
choose whether to extend it.”
That made sense—though I disliked admitting that this small
furred body I could crush in my two hands contained a personality
forceful enough to bring me easily to terms. I had had few close
contacts with anyone in the past. My relationship with Hywel Jern
had been that of pupil to teacher, junior officer to commander. And
while Vondar Ustle was a man of easier temperament, far more
outgoing than my father, the relationship had remained practically
the same for me when I entered his service. Beyond that I had had
no deep ties with any man or creature. But now I had been summarily
adopted by Eet, and it appeared that my will did not enter into the
agreement any more than it had with Hywel or Vondar—for it had
been of their desire in both cases. But—my anger arose—I was not
going to stand in the same relationship to Eet!
“They come!” Eet’s warning shocked me out of
my thoughts.
We had been so long without any contact with the natives that I
had believed they had given up. If they moved in now, we might find
our shelter a trap.
“How many and where?” Eet was right; in such a
situation I must depend upon his senses.
“Three—” Eet took his time to answer. “And
they are very hesitant. I think that this place represents danger
to them. On the other hand—they are hungry.”
For a second or so, that had no meaning for me. Then I
stiffened. “You mean—?”
“We—or rather you—represent meat. Contact with such
primitive minds is difficult. But I read hunger, kept in check
mainly by fear. They have memory of danger here.”
“But—by the signs we have seen, there is plenty of game
here.” I remembered the fresh tracks, the evidences of life
we had seen in profusion, and how easy it had been for the
fisherman to scoop out his prey.
“Just so. A puzzle as to why our trail would draw them
past easier hunting.” Eet did seem puzzled. “The
reason, I cannot probe. Their minds are too alien, too primitive to
read with any clarity. But they are aroused now past the limit of
prudence. And they are most dangerous in the dark.”
I fingered the beamer on my harness. If the creatures were
mainly night hunters, a flash in their eyes would dazzle them for a
moment. But my own folly in picking this hole with its towering
walls about us might be the deciding factor—against us.
“It is not as bad as all that,” Eet broke in.
“There is a top to the wall—”
“Well above my reaching. But if you can climb it—climb!” I ordered.
I felt a sharp tug at one corner of the covering I had drawn
over us.
“Let this free,” Eet countered. “Climb I can,
but perhaps we shall both be safe because of the fact that my claws
are useful.” He was out of my lap, dragging the cover behind
him, though it was a burden which pulled his head to one side.
“Hold me up,” he commanded then, “as high as
you can reach, and take some of the weight of this
thing!”
I obeyed, because I had no counterplan, and I had come, during
our association, to give credit to Eet. I lifted his body, held it
above my own head, and felt him catch hold, and draw himself up.
Then I fed along the length of the shelter cloth, keeping its
weight from pulling him back as he went. Suddenly it was still, no
longer tugged.
“Tie the knife to it and let go—” Eet ordered.
Let my only weapon out of my hands? He was crazy! Yet even as my
thoughts protested, another part of me set my hands busy knotting
that tool-weapon to the end of the dangling cloth. I heard it, even
through the storm, clang and rap against the stone as it was drawn
aloft by Eet.
I faced around, to the open side of the enclosure. Though I did
not have Eet’s warning alert, I was sure that the aliens no
longer hesitated, that they moved through the darkness. I pressed
the button on the beamer, looking down the ray path.
They did indeed gather there, half crouched, their clubs ready
in their fists. But as the light struck them full on, they blinked,
blinded, their small mouths opening on thin, piping cries. The
middle one dropped to his knees, his arm flung up to shield his
hideous face from the light.
“Behind you—up!” Eet’s mental cry was as loud
as a shout might have been in my ear. I felt the brush of something
at my shoulder, flung out my hand to ward it off, and touched the
fabric of the shelter. My fingers closed about it and I tugged. But
it did not fall; somewhere aloft it was anchored, to give me a
possible ladder to safety.
Dared I turn my back upon the three the light still held
prisoners? Yet how long could I continue to hold them so? I must
chance it—
If only that improvised rope and whatever Eet had found aloft to
anchor it would hold under my weight! But that was another chance I
must take. I gave a short leap and caught the dangling folds with
both hands, swung out a little to plant my feet against the wall,
and climbed, or rather walked up that surface, the shelter my
support.
“We are followed,” Eet informed
me.
“The fisherman?”
“Or one of his kind.” My companion did nothing to
relieve my mind with that report. “But he is cautious—he
fears—”
“What?” I demanded bitterly. “This knife is no
adequate defense, except at close quarters. And I have no desire to
stand up to him as might a Korkosan gladiator. I am no fighter,
only a peaceful gem trader.”
Eet disregarded most of my sour protest. “He fears
death-from-a-distance. He has witnessed such—or knows of
it.”
Death from a distance? That could mean anything from a thrown
spear or slingshot propelled rock, to a laser beam, and all the
grades of possible “civilization” in between.
“Just so.” Eet had picked up my thought. “But,
” I caught a suggestion of puzzlement. “I can read no
more, only that he fears and so sniffs us prudently.”
We holed up in a mass of drift thrust into a corner between two
downed trees, eating from our supply of seeds, drinking from the
ship’s flask. The seeds might be nutritious, but they did not
allay my need for something less monotonous. And I had seen none of
them growing since we had come into the dripping country, so that I
rationed carefully what we had. As I chewed my handful, I watched
our back trail for any sign of a tracker.
I sighted him at last. He had gone down on one knee, his head
almost touching the ground as that trunk-like, mobile nose of his
quivered and twisted above my tracks. If it was not the fisherman,
it was one enough like him to be his twin.
After a long sniffing, he squatted back on his heels, his head
raised, that trunk standing almost straight out from its roots as
he turned his head slowly. I fully expected him to point directly
at us, and I readied my knife desperately.
But there was no halt in that swing. If he did know where we
were, he was cunning enough to guess we might be alert, and did not
betray his discovery. I waited tensely for him to arise and charge,
or to disappear into the brush in an attempt to circle around for
an ambush.
“He does not know, he still seeks—” Eet said.
“But—if he sniffed out our trail, how could he miss
scenting us now?”
“I do not know. Only that he still seeks. Also he is
afraid. He does not like—”
“What?” I demanded when Eet paused.
“It is too hard, I cannot read. This one feels more than
he thinks. One can read thoughts, and the cruder emotions. But his
breed is new to me; I cannot gain more than surface
impressions.”
At any rate, though my trail led directly from where the sniffer
now squatted, he made no attempt to advance. Whether I could leave
the cover we had taken refuge in without attracting attention, I
did not know.
Two trees, not the huge giants of the forest, but ones of
respectable girth, had fallen so that their branched crowns met,
their trunks lying at right angles. We were in the corner formed by
the branched part, a screen of drift piled not too thickly between
us and the native.
I saw that the branches were bleached, leafless, but matted
together. Yet the stone pulled me toward them, as if it would have
me go through that mass. I hunched down and began to saw away at
the obstructions. Eet was there, his forepaws at work, snapping off
smaller pieces, while I dug with the point of the knife in the soft
earth under the heavier branches. We moved very slowly, pausing
many times to survey the open ground between us and the sniffer. To
my surprise, for I knew we were far from noiseless (in spite of our
best efforts), he did not appear and Eet reported he had not
moved.
It suddenly occurred to me, with a chill, what his purpose might
be—that he was not alone, and that when his reinforcements moved
into place there would be a charge after all.
“You are right.” Eet was no comforter. “There
is one, perhaps two more, coming—”
“Why did you not tell me?”
“Had it been necessary I would have. But why add to
apprehension when a clear mind is needful? They are yet some
distance away. It is a pity, but the day is almost gone. To them, I
believe, night is no problem.”
I did not put my thoughts into words; Eet could read them well
enough anyway. “Are there any in front of us?” I bit
back and curbed my anger.
“None within my sensing range. They do not like that
direction. This one waits for the others’ coming, not because
he fears us, but because he fears where we head. His fear grows
stronger as he waits.”
“Then—let us get farther ahead—” I no longer tried
to be so careful, but slashed at branches, cutting our way through
the springy wall in quick blows.
“Well spoken,” Eet agreed. “Always supposing
we do not run from one danger into a greater one.”
I made no reply to that, but hoped that Eet was reading my
emotions and that they would scorch him. Beyond the trees were more
of the scum-rimmed pools, fallen trunks. But the latter provided us
with a road of sorts. The fisherman had been armed with nothing
more lethal than a club, which he could not use at a distance. He
knew we fled, and it seemed to me that speed was now in order.
With Eet back on my shoulders, his paw-hands gripping the ties
of my pack, I sprang onto the nearest trunk and ran, leaping from
one to the next, not in a straight line, but always in the
direction the stone pointed me. For I could not help but hope that
it would guide me to some installation, or ship, perhaps even a
settlement of those who had owned the ring, even as it had brought
us across space to the derelict. The great age of that ship,
however, suggested I would find no living community.
We were out of the gloom. Not only had the flood cut a swath
among the trees, but the secondary growth had been undermined and
was scanty. Now I could see the sky overhead.
But that was full of clouds, and while it was still warm enough
to make one pant when exercising, there was no sun. Insects buzzed
about, so that at times I had to swing my hand before my face to
clear my vision. But none bit my flesh. Perhaps I was so alien to
their usual source of nourishment that they could not.
There was no sign of any pursuit, and Eet, though he had ceased
to communicate when we began this dash, would, I believed, raise
the warning if it were needed. I appeared to possess some
importance to him, though his evasiveness concerning that bothered
me.
Again pools began to link together, forcing me to make more and
more detours from the direct path the stone indicated. I had no
wish to splash through even the shallows of those evil-looking,
bescummed floods. Who knew what might hide below their foul
surfaces? Perhaps the insects did not find me tasty, but that did
not mean other native life would be so fastidious.
I had no idea of the length of the planetary day, but it seemed
to me now that the cloud blanket overhead did not account for all
the lack of light and that this might be late afternoon. Before
night we must find some safe place in which to hole up. If the
natives were nocturnal, the advantage of any encounter would rest
with them.
The water pushed me back, farther and farther to the right,
while the tug of the stone was now left, straight into the watery
region. Its pull became so acute and constant that I finally had to
slip the loop from my hand and put it back in the pouch, lest it
overbalance me into one of the very sinks I fought to skirt.
There was much evidence that not only had this lake been far
larger in the not too far-distant past but it was still draining
away in the very direction the ring pointed. It was hard going and
from time to time I demanded of Eet reassurance that we were not
being followed. But each time he reported all clear.
It was decidedly darker and I had yet found no possible place to
lie up for the night. Too many tracks in the mud suggested that
life, large life, crawled from pond to lake, came from the water
and returned to it. And the size of some of those tracks was enough
to make a man think twice, three, a dozen times, before settling
down near their roadways.
I had passed the first of the outcrops before I really noticed
them, so covered were they with dried mud which afforded anchorage
to growing things. It was when I scrambled up on one to try for a
better look at what might lie ahead that it dawned on me that they
were not scattered without pattern but were set in a line which
could not be that of nature alone.
My foot slipped on the surface and I slid forward, trying to
stop my fall by digging the point of the knife well in. But the
stone resisted my blade, which came away with an almost metallic
sound, scraping off a huge patch of mud.
What I had uncovered was not rough stone, but a smooth surface
which had been artificially finished. When I touched it I could not
be sure it was stone at all. It had a sleekness, almost as if the
rock had been fused into a glassy overcoat—though in places this
was scaled and pitted.
In color it was dull green, veined with ocher strata. Yet it was
not part of a wall, for the stones did not abut, but had several
paces distance between them. Perhaps there had once been some link
of another material now vanished.
The outcrops ran in the direction the stone urged upon me,
marching down to the lake, partially submerged near the shore,
water lapping their crowns farther out, then entirely covered.
As I continued along the lake, now alert to any other evidence,
I came across a second line of blocks, paralleling those swallowed
by the water. These I took for a guide. They were certainly the
remains of some large erection, ancient though they appeared. And
as such they could well lead to a building, or even a ruin which
would shelter us.
“Just so,” Eet agreed. “But it would be well
to hurry faster. Night will come soon under these clouds and I
think a storm also. If more water feeds this lake—”
There was no need for him to underline his thought. I jumped
from one of those blocks half buried in the muck to the next,
listening for warning thunder (if storms on this planet were
accompanied by such warnings) and fearing to feel the first drops
of rain. The wind was growing stronger and it brought with it a low
wailing which stopped me short until Eet’s reassurance
came:
“That is not the voice of a living thing—only
sound—” He sniffed as thoroughly as the trunk-nosed
native.
The blocks for the first time now were joined together, rising
into a wall, and I dropped down to walk beside it. It soon topped
my head. There were too many shadows in its overhang, so I edged
into the open.
I would have climbed again after a while for a better look at
the country ahead, but the tops of these blocks were not level.
Instead they were crowned with projections, the original form of
which could not be guessed, for they were eroded and worn to stubs
which pricked from them at meaningless angles.
On this side of the wall the signs of flood ceased, except in
some places where apparently waves had spilled over the top, in a
few instances actually turning and twisting the mighty blocks of
the coping over which they had beaten.
There were no trees here. We moved across an open space which
gave footing only to brush that did not grow high. Where one of the
waves had topped the wall, I saw that I walked on a coating of soil
overlying pavement, some of which had the same fused look as the
surface of the wall.
If I walked some road or courtyard, there was no other wall. The
clouds were very thick and dark now, and the first pattering rain
began. The wall was no protection, nor was there any other shelter
in this sparsely grown land. I ran on, my tiring body having to be
forced to that pace, both my pack and Eet weighing cruelly on
me.
Then the wall beside which I jogged made a sharp turn left and
ended in a three-sided enclosure. It had no roof, but those three
sides were the best protection I had seen. We could stretch the
shelter from the wreck over us to afford some cover. Also, I was
not going to blunder on in the dark. So I darted into that
enclosure, squatting down in the corner I judged easiest to defend.
There we huddled, the covering draped over my head and shoulders,
Eet in my lap, as the night and the storm closed down upon us.
But we were not quite in the dark. As I changed position I saw
the faintest of glows from the pouch which held the stone, and when
I pried open the top a fraction, there was a thin ray of light.
Just as it had come alive before, so it was registering energy now.
Was this ruin its goal? If so, had the LB led us directly to the
home planet from which the derelict had lifted eons ago? Such a
supposition could not be ruled out as fantastic. The LB could have
been set on a homing device and the drifting ship might have met
its fate soon after take-off. Unwittingly we might have made a full
circle, returning the ring to the world on which it was fashioned.
But the age of the stones at my back certainly argued that those
who had dwelt here were long gone, that I had stumbled on traces of
one of the Forerunner races, about whom we know so little and even
the Zacathans can only speculate.
To spend a stormy night amid alien ruins of incalculable age was
not my idea of a well-chosen pastime. My search for gems had taken
me into many strange places, but then I had only been second to
Vondar, leaning on his knowledge and experience. And earlier I had
looked to my father, not only for physical protection, but for that
teaching which would aid in survival.
As I crouched there with the rain drumming on the thin sheet
which was my only roof, I was only partially aware of the night,
the alien walls, the need for alertness. One part of my mind sought
back down the years, to my father’s first showing of the ring
with the zero stone—for that was what he had once termed it, a
challenge to his knowledge and curiosity.
It had been found on a suited body floating in space. Had that
body been one of the crew of the derelict? And my father had died
at the hands of someone who had then searched his office, the zero
stone the prize the murderer sought.
Then Vondar Ustle and I had been entrapped at the inn on Tanth.
And I could accept that that had not happened by a chance pointing
of the selective arrow. It had been planned. Perhaps they had
believed that, being off-worlders, we would resist the priests just
as we had, and both be slain, as Vondar was. They could not have
foreseen that I would break away and reach the sanctuary.
For the first time I resented my bargain with Ostrend. And the
trader in me regretted the gems I had paid for a passage which had
already been arranged by another. So—I was to have been
transported to Waystar and turned over there to those paying for my
rescue. For what purpose? Because I was my father’s son, or
his reputed son, and so might have possession of, or knowledge of,
that very thing which now glowed faintly against my chest?
Again by chance I had escaped—the fever—a contagion picked up
on Tanth, or on that unnamed world where the people had so
mysteriously disappeared? That sickness which had so oddly struck
just at the proper time—Oddly struck!
“Just so,” Eet answered with his favorite words of
agreement. “Just so. You alone of the crew sickening so—why
did it take you so long to wonder about that?”
“But why? I know Valcyr picked my cabin to give birth—
that must have been chance—”
“Was it?”
“But you could not have—” What if he could? As
helpless as Eet’s body had looked when I found Valcyr with
him on the bunk, did that necessarily mean that his mind—?
“You are beginning to think,” Eet replied
approvingly. “There was a natural affinity operating between
us even then. The crew of the ship were a close-knit clan. It was
necessary for me to find one detached from that organization, one
who could furnish me with what I needed most at that time,
protection and transportation away from danger while I was in a
weak state. Had I encountered them at a later period I would not
have been so endangered. But I needed a partner—”
“So you made me ill!”
“A slight alteration of certain body fluids. No danger,
though it appeared so.” There was a complacency in his answer
which for a moment made me want to hurl Eet out into the dark and
whatever danger might lurk there.
“But you will not,” he answered my not completely
formulated thought. “It was not only a matter of expediency
which made me choose to reveal myself to you. I spoke of natural
affinities. There is a tie between us based on far more than
temporary needs. As I have said, this body I now wear is not,
perhaps, what I might have chosen for this particular phase of my
existence. I have modified it as much as I can for now. Perhaps
there will be other possible alterations in the future, given time
and means. But I do have senses which aid you. Just as your bulk
and strength do me. I believe you have already discovered some of
the advantages of such a partnership.
“We are still far from any situation you may term safe.
And our alliance is very necessary to both of us. Afterward we can
choose whether to extend it.”
That made sense—though I disliked admitting that this small
furred body I could crush in my two hands contained a personality
forceful enough to bring me easily to terms. I had had few close
contacts with anyone in the past. My relationship with Hywel Jern
had been that of pupil to teacher, junior officer to commander. And
while Vondar Ustle was a man of easier temperament, far more
outgoing than my father, the relationship had remained practically
the same for me when I entered his service. Beyond that I had had
no deep ties with any man or creature. But now I had been summarily
adopted by Eet, and it appeared that my will did not enter into the
agreement any more than it had with Hywel or Vondar—for it had
been of their desire in both cases. But—my anger arose—I was not
going to stand in the same relationship to Eet!
“They come!” Eet’s warning shocked me out of
my thoughts.
We had been so long without any contact with the natives that I
had believed they had given up. If they moved in now, we might find
our shelter a trap.
“How many and where?” Eet was right; in such a
situation I must depend upon his senses.
“Three—” Eet took his time to answer. “And
they are very hesitant. I think that this place represents danger
to them. On the other hand—they are hungry.”
For a second or so, that had no meaning for me. Then I
stiffened. “You mean—?”
“We—or rather you—represent meat. Contact with such
primitive minds is difficult. But I read hunger, kept in check
mainly by fear. They have memory of danger here.”
“But—by the signs we have seen, there is plenty of game
here.” I remembered the fresh tracks, the evidences of life
we had seen in profusion, and how easy it had been for the
fisherman to scoop out his prey.
“Just so. A puzzle as to why our trail would draw them
past easier hunting.” Eet did seem puzzled. “The
reason, I cannot probe. Their minds are too alien, too primitive to
read with any clarity. But they are aroused now past the limit of
prudence. And they are most dangerous in the dark.”
I fingered the beamer on my harness. If the creatures were
mainly night hunters, a flash in their eyes would dazzle them for a
moment. But my own folly in picking this hole with its towering
walls about us might be the deciding factor—against us.
“It is not as bad as all that,” Eet broke in.
“There is a top to the wall—”
“Well above my reaching. But if you can climb it—climb!” I ordered.
I felt a sharp tug at one corner of the covering I had drawn
over us.
“Let this free,” Eet countered. “Climb I can,
but perhaps we shall both be safe because of the fact that my claws
are useful.” He was out of my lap, dragging the cover behind
him, though it was a burden which pulled his head to one side.
“Hold me up,” he commanded then, “as high as
you can reach, and take some of the weight of this
thing!”
I obeyed, because I had no counterplan, and I had come, during
our association, to give credit to Eet. I lifted his body, held it
above my own head, and felt him catch hold, and draw himself up.
Then I fed along the length of the shelter cloth, keeping its
weight from pulling him back as he went. Suddenly it was still, no
longer tugged.
“Tie the knife to it and let go—” Eet ordered.
Let my only weapon out of my hands? He was crazy! Yet even as my
thoughts protested, another part of me set my hands busy knotting
that tool-weapon to the end of the dangling cloth. I heard it, even
through the storm, clang and rap against the stone as it was drawn
aloft by Eet.
I faced around, to the open side of the enclosure. Though I did
not have Eet’s warning alert, I was sure that the aliens no
longer hesitated, that they moved through the darkness. I pressed
the button on the beamer, looking down the ray path.
They did indeed gather there, half crouched, their clubs ready
in their fists. But as the light struck them full on, they blinked,
blinded, their small mouths opening on thin, piping cries. The
middle one dropped to his knees, his arm flung up to shield his
hideous face from the light.
“Behind you—up!” Eet’s mental cry was as loud
as a shout might have been in my ear. I felt the brush of something
at my shoulder, flung out my hand to ward it off, and touched the
fabric of the shelter. My fingers closed about it and I tugged. But
it did not fall; somewhere aloft it was anchored, to give me a
possible ladder to safety.
Dared I turn my back upon the three the light still held
prisoners? Yet how long could I continue to hold them so? I must
chance it—
If only that improvised rope and whatever Eet had found aloft to
anchor it would hold under my weight! But that was another chance I
must take. I gave a short leap and caught the dangling folds with
both hands, swung out a little to plant my feet against the wall,
and climbed, or rather walked up that surface, the shelter my
support.