“That’s okay for you to say,” Clayborne snapped. “You’ve no idea what vertigo is like.”
“I know one thing,” said Bannerman, without emotion. “If you ever move to strike me again, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
“All right, all right!” Anderson shouted. “That’s enough. What the hell is everyone fighting about? We’re two-thirds of the way down and only one casualty. Let’s thank our lucky stars it wasn’t worse. It could so easily have been much worse.”
Varre had meanwhile been to the edge of the pool where the water overflowed down the escarpment. “From here on down it’s not so hard,” he informed. “Even carrying Turnbull, it should take us no more than an hour, an hour and a half. Or we can wait here and see what happens.”
“See what happens?” Angela was cold now in the shadow of the cliffs; she hugged herself and stamped her feet to keep the circulation going.
“To him,” said Varre almost negligently, indicating Turnbull with a nod of his head.
“He needs to be kept warm,” said Gill. He had considered Turnbull the one man he could really trust and get on with,. and now the big fellow was in a bad way. “In fact we all need to keep warm. I’ve noticed how it’s been getting colder. It’s this spray, clinging to everything. Look, do you see how long the shadows have grown? This isn’t our world. The sun seems to be racing and the days will be correspondingly short. Another hour or two and it will be dark. I suggest we move along the shelf away from the water, get some fires going, dry ourselves out. Maybe we can find a place to make camp for the night. But in any case, we shouldn’t try to move Turnbull too far while he’s like this.”
Oddly enough, Haggie sided with him at once. “He’s right. We don’t want to be too eager to get down into the forest for nightfall. You can’t be sure what you’ll meet up with down there.”
Anderson looked at him curiously. “You said you’d been here before,” he said. “Does that mean you know what’s down there in the forest?”
Haggie scowled. “No,” he answered, “I don’t know them. And I really don’t want to. It’s bad enough just listening to them howling and killing each other in the dark … .”
Gill woke up and knew something was wrong. And also, paradoxically, he knew something was amazingly right. Or at least that it felt right.
He felt right! For the first time in five long years he wasn’t cramped; he wasn’t bursting for a pee; his lungs weren’t on fire, and his bones didn’t feel like they’d break if someone spoke to him. He was a little stiff, yes, but he didn’t feel like he was coming apart at the seams. It really would be a miracle if he didn’t at least feel stiff! There was a word, “well-being”, whose meaning he’d almost forgotten, because it hadn’t applied to him. But he was sure it was meant to describe something like this.
He would have liked to dwell on this amazing new sensation and analyse it, but he knew that it wasn’t what had brought him awake. So what had?
The place they had found for themselves wasn’t really a cave, or at best it was a shallow one under something of an overhang. It was simply a place in the cliff where a massive boulder had rolled free and toppled forward, leaving a concavity to its rear which it protected with its bulk. Centrally on a sandy floor, the embers of their fire were still glowing. Clayborne had had a book of matches which by now should have dried out, but Anderson had had a cigarette lighter. Thank God for Anderson’s lighter!
Close beside Gill, Turnbull groaned in his sleep. Was that what had brought him awake? Had he heard the big man moaning—or had it been something else? Movement? Was that what he’d sensed?
Gill abandoned his amazement at his own sense of, yes, well-being, laid aside his overcoat and sat up. He reached out and touched Turnbull’s forehead. It was cool, dry. His fever had broken. Gill quietly stood up (still no aches and pains, and his lungs gratefully drinking in the chill night air) and looked around. Anderson’s lumpy figure lay coiled close to the fire’s dying embers; Clayborne lay flat out on his back, his large hands twitching in some dream or other; Haggie was … where was Haggie?
The unpleasant little redhead had gone to sleep there on the opposite side of the fire. Now there was just the depression he’d cleared for himself in the sand. Bannerman had also slept over there, and there was no sign of him, either! What the hell was going on? Was it morning already?
Gill moved a little apart from the main sleeping area and looked into the shadowy corner where Angela had curled up in her parka. The parka was still there … but no Angela. Of course, it could be that Bannerman or maybe Haggie was relieving Varre, and that the other two were getting a breath of fresh air. Perhaps they’d found it difficult to sleep. Calls of nature?
Varre should know. The Frenchman had volunteered himself for the job as watchkeeper—outside the cave, of course. He had declared that he could never sleep anyway, not cooped up in there. He would keep watch, and perhaps later one of them would relieve him. If not he’d wake them at dawn, then snatch a little sleep himself while the rest of them made plans and preparations for the day ahead.
Gill decided to speak to him. He should know about the others. Especially about Angela. Even her temporary absence from this place made Gill’s mouth go dry. He didn’t know what their chances were, but having just found her he wasn’t about to lose her if he could help it.
He fed some broken lengths of dry, brittle creeper into the fire, then made his way swiftly and silently out of the hollow behind the great boulder. He came out into starlight (no moon that he could see) and for a moment was stunned by the night sky. He’d never seen stars so large, so colorful, so many. They filled the sky like jewels, making the night live and breathe. The skies were literally glorious! And of all those amazing constellations blazing up there, not a one that he recognised. Which shouldn’t have surprised him, but did anyway.
Varre had propped himself up in a leaning, hollowed rock, covering himself with his coat. Gill went to him and found him fast asleep. Some watchdog!
“Spencer!” Angela’s voice split the night from somewhere close to the shelf’s rim. Gill held his breath, felt his heart begin to hammer. Again she called out, this time urgently, breathlessly, “Spencer!” And: “Oh, take your … filthy hands … off me!”
And another voice—Haggie’s—low, dangerous, and warning: “Listen, Angie doll, we’re not getting out of this. Not you, not me, and not your bleeding Spencer. None of us. So we have to get what’s going now, while it’s still warm!”
Gill rushed in the direction of the voices, uncaring whether he broke his neck or not. Caring only to break Haggie’s neck. He saw them outlined against the sky: Haggie clutching her from behind, with one hand over her mouth and the other tearing at her blouse as she tried to break away.
And then he saw something else coming up from beyond the rim. Something black and glinting and monstrous beyond belief!
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Angela!” Gill shouted then as the sight of the thing clambering up over the rim of the escarpment stopped him dead in his tracks. “For God’s sake—look out!” But she’d already seen it, and so had Haggie.
The little redhead let out a single, bubbling, inarticulate shriek which rose into the night and came echoing back from the face of the escarpment, and started running. Angela fled with him, not caring where she was going but only that she put distance between herself and the glittering, metallically tinted monstrosity which had now dragged itself fully onto the rock shelf. And still Gill stood frozen with his jaw hanging slack, staring at the thing in the starlight.
It was … an elongated crab, a rearing scorpion or mantis, a nightmare given form and substance and grown to monstrous proportions. Nine feet long, five wide, four high, with stalked eyes, incredibly articulate claws, antennae, a stinger arced over its back, and other appendages whose functions could only be guessed at. It was blue-gleaming chitin, ivory mandibles, feathery, flickering feelers. All of these things and something else, for Gill knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that it wa
s also Haggie’s pursuer.
For as he’d stared at the creature in stunned amazement, so in its turn the thing had gazed at him. Its feelers and antennae had strained in his direction, and its glittering faceted eyes had seemed to focus upon him—but only for a second. Then it had rejected him, turned like a living tank on its own axis and gone scurrying after Haggie and Angela. Except Gill guessed it wasn’t especially interested in Angela. She wasn’t its target. But she was in its way.
“Angela!” he yelled again, his voice hoarse with fear for her. “Come back. Get away from Haggie. It isn’t coming for you. If’s after him!”
If she heard him it made no difference; and then it dawned on Gill that of course she hadn’t heard him. She’d been panicked, at first by Haggie and now by this thing. Also, they were running towards the falls; Gill’s voice would have been mainly drowned out by the thunder of the waters. Cursing under his breath, he ran after them.
He glanced back once and saw that Varre had at last come awake. Anderson and Clayborne were there, too, stumbling about like lost souls in the starlight. Clayborne carried a flaring brand taken from the fire. Only Bannerman was still missing—but right now Gill didn’t have the time or inclination to worry about Bannerman or anything else. His head (and his heart, too?) was full of Angela. Gnawing fear for Angela.
The lobster-scorpion thing was now directly in front of him; always choosing the easiest route, it scurried around and between a pebble-dash smatter of domed boulders where they littered the wide shelf. The thing didn’t seem capable of a lot of speed; it was terrifying mainly by virtue of its looks, and awesome in its determination, its single-minded concentration upon the job in hand. No wonder Haggie feared it so. For already Gill knew—as Haggie himself knew—that the monster wasn’t going to give up the chase until it had achieved its aim, which was to take the redhead. But why?
He drew parallel with the scuttling creature but a little apart from it, skirted it and clambered across crumbling ledges of rock and domed boulders to get in front. His intention was to reach Angela first and separate her from Haggie. But then … disaster!
Scrambling across spray-damp boulders, he slipped; his feet shot out from under him; he crashed down on soft, wet shingle directly in the creature’s path. Winded, almost exhausted by a combination of panic and unaccustomed exertion, Gill lay on his back and looked up at the thing as it bore down on him.
It jerked to an uncertain halt; great pincers swung high and poised there; the thing’s stalked eyes swivelled to peer down on Gill, angling this way and that to encompass his whole body. Its mandibles clashed inches from his face as its blue-glinting legs straddled him, firmly anchoring the monster where it stood astride him. And Gill thought: It’s breathing right into my face and I can’t smell a thing! Not anything animal, anyway …
And then, as surely as he was gifted with a sixth sense, he knew what he was up against. He knew what it was, and why it pursued Haggie with such grim intent: because it had been programmed to do just that. Programmed, yes—for it was a machine!
A pair of pincers came swinging down and Gill’s flesh went cold. He batted uselessly at the hinged crab claws with both fists; they ignored him, took him by the waist, lifted him to one side and dumped him. Unharmed in any way, he fell mere inches to the shingle at the rim of the cataract’s pool. Without more ado, the monster lumbered by and splashed many-legged into the water. And from across the pool: “Oh, Jesus! Jesus!” Haggie’s shrill shriek of terror rang out over the thundering of the water. “It’s after me—it’s coming!”
Gill got to his knees. He saw Angela and Haggie at the very edge of the pool, where the water flowed over its smooth rim and down the face of the escarpment. Wreathed in spray, they crouched there—and the nightmare machine wading or swimming towards them—and in the next moment Haggie grabbing Angela and throwing her bodily down. No, throwing her over the edge! Gill cried out, “No!”—felt an emotional agony tearing at his insides—as Haggie himself slipped over the edge and followed Angela down out of sight.
No! Gill said again, but this time to himself. And in the next moment he was in the chilly water, swimming for all he was worth in the wake of the grotesque machine; and only vaguely was he given to wonder how his weak, dying body could possibly sustain him through all of this. Or perhaps that was why he was able to do it: because he was dying anyway and it would make no difference. But the thought of Angela dying was something else.
The machine trailed its rearmost limbs in the water; Gill made a supreme effort and grabbed one of them, then hung on panting and gasping until the hunting thing reached the rim of the pool and rose up from the water. Its eye stalks swayed out over the gulf, directing its gaze downward. Faceted eyes focused, swivelled this way and that, and appendages at the front and rear of the body elongated, extending themselves silently but with pneumatic precision. Claws clamped to rock and the creature (even knowing it for a machine, still Gill thought of it as something alive) tilted sharply forward. It was preparing to go down—headfirst!
Gill stood up in the pool so close to the thing that he could reach out and touch it. The plated rear of its carapace was towards him, but even if he’d been visible to it, he suspected it would not interfere with him. It tilted more yet and inched forward, flattening itself to the ledge.
Gill knew a raging frustration; he stood there undecided with his jaw jutting, fists knotted. This damned thing was going to follow Haggie to the bitter end. If the redhead lived, it would find him. And if Angela lived, it would probably find her with Haggie. The one thing Gill wanted now was to find Angela, which meant that he must make an impossible decision. But impossible or not, he made it. As hoarse, shouting voices reached him from the far side of the pool, he climbed up onto the hunter’s back and clung there, deliberately snagging his clothing on its many sharp projections. And not a moment too soon.
With a sickening lurch the machine upended itself, turning through ninety degrees and into the vertical as it began its descent. Gill felt his clothes start to tear as he slid forward, was brought up short with a bump when his shoulder rammed up against the hunter’s stinger. Arcing forward over its back, that otherwise menacing scythe of chitin and arachnid-insect-crustacean flesh was something Gill could cling to. He did—for his life!
After that … all was a nightmare of lurching limbs, of gravity defied—but barely, Gill felt—and of claws and pincers grasping projecting rocks with such fierce energy that they occasionally burst asunder. That would be bad enough in itself—the fear that at any moment the machine could err and carry itself and its limpet passenger into oblivion—but there was a further complication. While it was an entirely mental thing, still it was a distraction which Gill couldn’t afford; and yet it insisted upon distracting him. It was this:
He was astride a machine, in closest possible contact with it, and his talent was confused to the point of breakdown. For he “knew” in his way that there was never a machine like it—not on Earth, anyway. What, an unmechanical machine? Unheard of! Or if there was something like it, then what it was was the mighty and enigmatic structure which men had called the Castle—now the House of Doors. He had sensed, felt, experienced these alien machines working, and for the first time in his life had failed to understand how they worked—because they were alien. Given time he might understand them, though that wasn’t something which would come easily.
But now there was something else, something which hitherto Gill had sensed only as a vague awareness. The House of Doors and the hunting thing both solicited the same response from his machine-oriented mind: he had accorded them the same instinctive recognition. Them and one other piece of … machinery? Previously he had put it down to the environment, to the fact that he was inside the House of Doors, which must be affecting or deflecting his talent as a magnet deflects a compass. But now he wasn’t so sure.
The thing that had been disturbing him was Bannerman—and the fact that he could no longer be sure that Bannerman was a man.
But a “tourist”? Possibly …
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sith of the Thone was mainly liquid, as most living things are. But since the Thone were essentially low-gravity creatures, in them the proportion of liquid to solid was far higher than the norm; in a low-grav situation, it is easier to flow than to walk. He did have microscopic solids in his chemical soup of a makeup, of course, but the only really “solid” thing about him now was a cylindrical exoskeletal sleeve of super-flexible plastic protecting that midsection of his person which contained his three vital organs: brain, primary motor system, and the spongy cartilaginous siphon-cum-nerve chain that linked them, corresponding in Earth-type creatures to the spinal column.
He was in aspect very much as Smart Alec Haggie had described him: an upright jellyfish going on three tentacles. Of eyes, ears and nostrils he had none; bands of sensors formed an intricate pattern of luminous blue dots all about his person, and with these he perceived more than adequately of three-dimensioned space and was aware of time—but not so conscious of it as are men. Men are mainly conscious of it because they have so little. Sith, on the other hand, had already spent more than a dozen human lifetimes in hypersleep alone.
Apart from the protection of his organs, his exoskeletal tube served one other very important purpose: it contained microconverters and gravitic deflection shields which drew energy from the synthesizer and converted it to combat the effect of Earth gravity, thus enclosing Sith’s person in a low-grav envelope. Without this envelope he would be little more than a stain on the floor.
Above the “waist”, Sith’s body contained a secondary motor system which functioned without direct physical connection to his brain. In fact it reacted to inward-beamed messages from his light- and other wave-sensitive sensor spots, thus negating any necessarily tedious brain activity. Therefore, his reactions were literally lightning fast; for the function of the upper motor system was the extrusion and control of manipulators, “hands”, with which to operate the synthesizer’s controls. Those of them, at least, which required sentient adjustment or instruction.