Star Hunter

  9

  They sorted the crash rations into small packs. A blanket of thewater-resistant, feather-heavy Ozakian spider silk was cut into aprotective covering for Vye. That piece of tailoring occupied themuntil the graying sky permitted them a full picture of the pocket inwhich the flitter had landed. The dark foliage of the mountain growthwas broken here by a ledge of dark-blue stone on which the flyerrested.

  To the right was a sheer drop, and a land slip had cut away the ledgeitself a few feet behind the flitter. There was only a steadilynarrowing path ahead, slanting upward.

  "Can we take off again?" Vye hoped to be reassured that such a featwas possible.

  "Look up!"

  Vye backed against the cliff wall, stared up at the sky. Well abovethem those globes still swam in unwearied circles, commanding the airlanes.

  Hume had cautiously approached the outer rim of the ledge, was usinghis distance glasses to scan what might lie below.

  "No sign yet."

  Vye knew what he meant. The globes were overhead, but the blue beasts,or any other fauna those balls might summon, had not yet appeared.

  Shouldering their packs they started along the ledge. Hume had his raytube, but Vye was weaponless, unless somewhere along their route hecould pick up some defensive and offensive arm. Stones had burst thelights of the islet, they might prove as effective against the bluebeasts. He kept watch for any of the proper size and weight.

  The ledge narrowed, one shoulder scraped the cliff now as theyrounded a pinnacle to lose sight of the flitter. But the globescontinued to hover over them.

  "We are still traveling in the direction they want," Vye speculated.

  Hume had gone to hands and knees to negotiate an ascent so steep hehad to search for head and toe holds. When they were safely past thatpoint they took a breather, and Vye glanced aloft again. Now the skywas empty.

  "We may have arrived, or are about to do so," said Hume.

  "Where?"

  Hume shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. And both of us can bewrong."

  The steep ascent did not quite reach the top of the cliff around theface of which the ledge curled. Instead their path now leveled off andbegan to widen out so that they could walk with more confidence. Thenit threaded into a crevice between two towering rock walls and slopeddownward.

  A path unnaturally smooth, Vye thought, as if shaped to funnelwayfarers on. And they came out on the rim of a valley, a valleycentered with a wood-encircled lake. They stepped from the rock of thepassage onto a springy turf which gave elastically to their tread.

  Vye's sandal struck a round stone. It started from its bed in theblack-green vegetation, turned over so that round pits staredeyelessly up at him. He was faced by the fleshless grin of a humanskull.

  Hume went down on one knee, examined the ground growth, gingerlylifted the lace of vertebrae forming a spine. That ended in a crushedbreak which he studied briefly before he laid the bones gently backinto the concealing cover of the mossy stuff.

  "That was done by teeth!"

  The cup of green valley had not changed, it was the same as it hadbeen when they had emerged from the crevice. But now every clump oftrees, every wind-rippled mound of brush promised cover.

  Vye moistened his lips, diverted his eyes from the skull.

  "Weathered," Hume said slowly, "must have been here for seasons, maybeplanet years."

  "A survivor from the L-B?" Yet this spot lay days of travel from thatclearing back in the plains.

  "How did he get here?"

  "Probably the same way we would have, had we not holed up on thatriver island."

  Driven! Perhaps the lone human on Jumala herded up into this dead-endvalley by the globes or the blue beasts. "This process must have beenin action for some time."

  "Why?"

  "I can give you two reasons." Hume studied the nearest trees narrowly."First--for some purpose, whatever we are up against wants allinterlopers moved out of the lowlands into this section, either toimprison them, or to keep them under surveillance. Second--" Hehesitated.

  Vye's own imagination supplied a second reason, a revolting one hetried to deny to himself even as he put it into words:

  "That broken spine--food...." Vye wanted Hume to contradict him, butthe Hunter only glanced around, his expression already sufficientanswer.

  "Let's get out of here!" Vye was fighting down panic with every ounceof control he could summon, trying not to bolt for the crevice. But heknew he could not force himself any farther into that sinister valley.

  "If we can!" Hume's words lingered direly in his ears.

  Stones had smashed the globes by the river. If they still waited outthere Vye was willing to try and break them with his bare hands,should escape demand such action. Hume must have agreed with thosethoughts, he was already taking long strides back to the cliffentrance.

  But that door was closed. Hume's foot, raised for the last step towardthe crevice corridor, struck an invisible obstruction. He reeled back,clutching at Vye's shoulder.

  "Something's there!"

  The younger man put out his hand questingly. What his fingersflattened against was not a tight, solid surface, but rather an unseenelastic curtain which gave a little under his prodding and then drewtaut again.

  Together they explored by touch what they could not see. The crevicethrough which they had entered was now closed with a curtain theycould not pierce or break. Hume tried his ray tube. They watched thinflame run up and down that invisible barrier, but not destroy it.

  Hume relooped the tube. "Their trap is sprung."

  "There may be another way out!" But Vye was already despondently surethere was not. Those who had rigged this trap would leave no boltholes. But because they were human and refused to accept theinevitable without a fight, the captives set off, not down into thecurve of the cup, but along its slope.

  Tongues of brush and tree clumps brought about detours which forcedthem slowly downward. They were well away from the crevice when Humehalted, flung up a hand in silent warning. Vye listened, trying topick up the sound which had alarmed his companion.

  It was as Vye strained to catch a betraying noise that he was firstconscious of what he did not hear. In the plains there had beensqueaking, humming, chitterings, the vocalizing of myriad grassdwellers. Here, except for the sighing of the wind and a few insectsounds--nothing. All inhabitants bigger than a Jumalan fly might havelong ago been routed out of the land.

  "To the left." Hume faced about.

  There was a heavy thicket there, too stoutly grown for anything to bewithin its shadow. Whatever moved must be behind it.

  Vye looked about him frantically for anything he could use as aweapon. Then he grabbed at the long bush knife in Hume's belt sheath.Eighteen inches of tri-fold steel gleamed wickedly, its hilt fittingneatly into his fist as he held it point up, ready.

  Hume advanced on the bush in small steps, and Vye circled to his lefta few paces behind. The Hunter was an expert with ray tube; that, too,was part of the necessary skill of a safari leader. But Vye couldoffer other help.

  He shrugged out of the blanket pack he had been carrying on his back,tossed that burden ahead.

  Out of cover charged a streak of red, to land on the bait. Humeblasted, was answered by a water-cat's high-pitched scream. The felinewrithed out of its life in a stench of scorched fur and flesh. As Vyeretrieved his clawed pack Hume stood over the dead animal.

  "Odd." He reached down to grasp a still twitching foreleg, stretchedthe body out with a sudden jerk.

  It was a giant of its species, a male, larger than any he had seen.But a second look showed him those ribs starting through mangy fur invisible hoops, the skin tight over the skull, far too tight. Thewater-cat had been close to death by starvation; its attack on the menprobably had been sparked by sheer desperation. A starving carnivorein a land lacking the normal sounds of small birds and animal life, ina valley used as a trap.

  "No way out and no food." Vye fitted one thought to another out l
oud.

  "Yes. Pin the enemy up, let them finish off one another."

  "But why?" Vye demanded.

  "Least trouble that way."

  "There are plenty of water-cats down on the plains. All of themcouldn't be herded up here to finish each other off; it would takeyears--centuries."

  "This one's capture may have been only incidental, or done for thepurpose of keeping some type of machinery in working order," Humereplied. "I don't believe this was arranged just to dispose ofwater-cats."

  "Suppose this was started a long time ago, and those who did it aregone, so now it goes on working without any real intelligence behindit. That could be the answer, couldn't it?"

  "Some process triggers into action when a ship sets down on thisportion of Jumala, maybe when one planet's under certain conditionsonly? Yes, that makes sense. Only why wasn't the first Patrol explorerflaming in here caught? And the survey team--we were here for months,cataloguing, mapping, not a whisper of any such trouble."

  "That dead man--he's been here a long time. And when did the LargoDrift disappear?"

  "Five--six years ago. But I can't give you any answers. I have none."

  * * * * *

  It began as a low hum, hardly to be distinguished from the distanthowling of the wind. Then it slid up scale until the thin wail becamean ululating scream torturing the ears, dragging out of hiding thosefears of a man confronting the unknown in the dark.

  Hume tugged at Vye, drew the other by force back into the brush.Scratched, laced raw by the whip of branches, they stood in a smallhollow with the drift of leaves high about their ankles. And theHunter pulled into place the portions of growth they had dislodged intheir passage into the thicket's heart. Through gaps they could seethe opening where lay the body of the water-cat.

  The wail was cut off short, that cessation in itself a warning. Vye'sbody, touching earth with knee and hand as he crouched, picked up avibration. Whatever came towards them walked heavily.

  Did the smell of death draw it now? Or had it trailed them from theclosed gate? Hume's breath hissed lightly between his teeth. He wassighting the ray tube through a leaf gap.

  A snuffling, heavier than a man's panting. A vast blot, which wasneither clearly paw nor hand, swept aside leaves and branches on theother side of the small clearing, tearing them casually from theshrubs.

  What shuffled into the open might be a cousin of the blue beasts. Butwhere they had given only an impression of brutal menace, this wassavagery incarnate. Taller than Hume, but hunched forward in itsneckless outline, the thing was a monster. And over the round of thelower jaw, tusks protruded in ugly promise.

  Being carnivorous and hungry, it scooped up the body of the water-catand fed without any prolonged ceremony. Vye, remembering the crushedspine of the human skeleton, was sickened.

  Done, it reared on hind feet once again, the pear-shaped head swung intheir direction. Vye was half certain he had seen that tube-noseexpand to test the air and scent them.

  Hume pressed the button of the ray tube. That soundless spear of deathstruck in midsection of that barrel body. The thing howled, threwitself in a mad forward rush at their bush. Hume snapped a secondblast at the head, and the fuzz covering it blackened.

  Missing them by a precious foot, the creature crashed straight onthrough the thicket, coming to its knees, writhing in a rising chorusof howls. The men broke out of cover, raced into the open where theytook refuge behind a chimney of rock half detached from the parentcliff. Down the slope the bushes were still wildly agitated.

  "What was that?" Vye got out between sobbing breaths.

  "Maybe a guardian, or a patrol stationed to dispose of any catch.Probably not alone, either." Hume fingered his ray tube. "And I amdown to one full charge--just one."

  Vye turned the knife he held around in his fingers, tried to imaginehow one could face up to one of those tusked monsters with only thisfor a weapon. But if that thing had companions, none were coming inanswer to its dying wails. And after it had been quiet for a whileHume motioned them out of hiding.

  "From now on we'll keep to the open, better see trouble like thatbefore it arrives. And I want to find a place to hole up for thenight."

  They trailed along the steep upper slope and in time found a placewhere a now dried stream had once formed a falls. The emptywatercourse provided an overhang, not quite a cave, but shelter.Gathering brush and stones, they made a barricade and settled behindit to eat sparingly of their rations.

  "Water--a whole lake of it down there. The worst of it is that a watersupply in a dry country is just where hunters congregate. That lake'sentirely walled in by woodland and provides cover for a thousandambushes."

  "We might find a way out before our water bulbs fail," Vye offered.

  Hume did not answer directly. "A man can live for quite a while onvery thin rations, and we have tablets from the flitter emergencysupplies. But he can't live long without water. We have two bulbs.With stretching that is enough for two days--maybe three."

  "We ought to get completely around the cliffs in another day."

  "And if we do find a way out, which I doubt, we're still going to needwater for the trek out. It's right down there waiting until our needis greater than either our fear or our cunning."

  Vye moved impatiently, his blanket-clad shoulders scraping the rock attheir backs. "You don't think we have a chance!"

  "We aren't dead. And as long as a man is breathing, and on his feet,with all his wits in his skull, he always has a chance. I've blastedoff-world with odds stacked high on the other side of the board." Heflexed that plasta-flesh hand which was so nearly human and yet not bythe fraction which had changed the course of his life. "I've lived onthe edge of the big blackout for a long time now--after a while youcan get used to anything."

  "One thing I would like--to get at the one who set this trap,"commented Vye.

  Hume laughed with dry humor. "After me, boy, after me. But I think wemight have to wait a long time for that meeting."