The Game of Stars and Comets

  There was a stir beside him. Isiga slid fluidly across the barrier between the driver's seat and the storage space to join the Terran.

  "The children sleep," she reported, "Also, it is well with Zannah."

  "Why didn't you traders leave when the red alert came from Nagassara?" Rees asked. Mission and trading post had had little contact. But he knew something of the Salariki temperament. Sakfor's stubborn remaining past a warning was a puzzle; the aliens of the trader's species were noted for prudence and wariness.

  A small sound came through the dark a hiss of feline anger. "Lord Sakfor was made a promise from the lips of the High Tree Ishgil. Traders were needed, so it was said. There would be nothing for us to fear."

  "Apparently that was not true." Rees kept his eyes on the dials before him. In the dark he had to depend much upon the auto-pilot.

  "So someone shall learn the result of such split tongue talk!" The cold confidence in that was a threat, or rather another kind of promise. Salariki civilization was based on a feudal organization. Such a tragedy as this which had struck down Sakfor's household would, on the trader's home world, instigate a blood-feud to be taken up by his kinsmen of all degrees. But there would be none to answer such a rallying on Ishkur.

  "You think," she was indeed reading his thoughts now, "that one female of a household can not draw a knife and call for the rightful deaths of the enemy. For the moment, no. But the time will come. I am now Name-Head."

  She was right! Rees was startled. Under certain conditions, which seldom materialize except in extreme instances such as this, the living adult survivor of a family, whether male or female, became the Name-Head of the victim clan. It was within providence that the woman beside him could demand vengeance from the Truce Court of her own planet and even so set an inter-world war ablaze.

  "First," Rees pointed out, "we ourselves will have to be safely out of this."

  "You believe that these Wrexul people will still be at the plantation?"

  "If they haven't voluntarily withdrawn, and there was no hint of their doing that the last I heard, they would be in better shape to meet an attack than any other off-world holding this side of the mountains. They fortified their headquarters buildings last season and have a private force of off-world police."

  In the reflected light of the instrument panel he caught a shimmer as she moved and the silvery fur-hair on her arms gleamed.

  "And if the Wrexul staff are gone?" she asked.

  "Lady," Rees gave her the proper form of address, "you had better pray to what God or Spirits of Power you own that they are there. We have an energy charge in this machine which, with luck, will last to lift us that far. After that, well, there is no way of crossing the mountains in a roller. And I do not think such a journey is possible on foot."

  "I thank you that you speak plainly with me," she said after a short pause. "But tell me this also, you have much experience of jungle ways, you are certain we could not travel on foot?"

  "Not with the children. I am not even certain a trained Survey Scout could get through, with the Crocs out hunting."

  "Our future lies then on the edge of a knife blade, and if the blade cuts . . ." Again that shimmer of silver, she had given a very Terran shrug. "Listen now, Lord Rees . . ." He was startled at that formal title. Though she had just assumed the head-ship of her own clan, she was granting him equality on the terms of her own world, a rare concession for one of the aloof Salariki. "If such a failure is upon us I would wish this, that we go as best we can into the high places, for I have heard that the snake-beasts do not favor the cold and snow in the peaks. Then, should there be no chance of any future for us, we take the warriors' way, going so Behind the Seas, our bodies undefiled. Or do you of Terra not believe that such a course is right and proper?"

  "To me that sounds proper," he assented, "if it must be done. We of Terra believe that much; that children and women should not be allowed to fall into the hands of such as the Crocs while men still live."

  "Yet there was a woman of your breed at the mission," Isiga pointed out. "And she died so."

  "There were divided minds at the mission. Some believed that because they had lived here for many years and treated the Crocs with kindness and fairly, they had nothing to fear."

  "Kindness! Fairly!" Her head went up, she made a hissing accusation of each word. "What is kindness, fair treatment, for aliens? To the Salariki kindness is first for his companions-of-the-inner-court and the cublings he fathers there, then to his clansmen. He does not waste good will lightly on strangers without the courtyards. Fairness, yes, that he practices with all, as long as the Peace Flag flies and no man arms for war. Kindness, fairness—to the Salariki those words have one meaning—to Terrans another—to the snake-beasts yet a third. We walk in the patterns set by our ancestors, how can we change to other trails and expect to discover no pitfalls in them? Those who believed the snake-beasts thought the same thoughts, they were fools!"

  "Well, they have paid for their folly," Rees said heavily.

  "Yet I do not think you were of a like mind. Why did you stay?"

  "Because Dr. Naper, the head of the mission, was my chief-of-clan." He put into Salariki idiom the relationship with his uncle. "I was a warrior of the household."

  "Then it was fitting that you stayed," she agreed instantly. "Yet you were not one of them in thought, for they were not a people going armed and ready for war."

  "You seem to know a great deal about them." Rees was rather puzzled. Dr. Naper and the rest of the mission personnel had certainly not fraternized with the post. And he himself had been so much of the time off in the jungle with Vickery, trying to escape an atmosphere where too often his beliefs gave offense, that he had not had much contact with the post either, having seen Sakfor only twice since the Salariki party arrived six months previously.

  A sound which might equal a Terran chuckle came from his seat companion. "In this place if a pat-gru flower blooms a sun before its time there is talk of such a wonder for half a moon. Do you not think that curiosity led us to speculate concerning the only other off-worlders within reach? We knew what food you ate, what beds you rested upon, what clothing you wore, and what thoughts you held or, at least, how you expressed those thoughts in deeds and words. Thus we knew well that those of the mission did not believe in walking a road of warriors. Thus, how easily fighters were able to gobble them up!"

  Rees was stung. Isiga only repeated what he thought to be the truth. Terran could criticize Terran but to hear that scorn in an alien voice made him begin a retort he choked off in midword.

  "But the Salariki al—"

  "The Salariki also were victims? You speak that which is right. So we may see that both of our peoples have been fools, each in our own fashion," she replied. "Now we can only prepare not to fail again. Ah!"

  A silver finger tip beckoned his attention, pointing to the right. They had taken to the course of the river as soon as the sky had darkened into night, using the faintly phosphorescent water, cascading from a source somewhere in the eastern mountains, for a guide to ground the roller's touching between soaring leaps. The jungle vegetation, discovering no rooting room on the rocky verges of the stream, was a black mass well to either side of the water's path. Here and there sparkled a lamp-bush, eerily green-blue, drawing to its deadly trap by that light the night flying things it fed upon.

  But the color in the night to which Isiga pointed was no lamp-bush. This was a leaping burst of flame, flame consuming some highly combustible fuel, such as the energy blocks necessary to power a roller or 'copter.

  Rees hazarded a guess as to the source, one which shook him in spite of the bleak forecasts he had forced earlier on himself. "Ffalow's!"

  "The relay station for the Patrol flights over mountain," she added to that identification. "But would there have been any supplies left there to burn? I thought they had closed that down two weeks ago."

  "They might have left a cache, as an aid to the mission, or to your
post. Uncle Milo didn't say anything about such. But he was so opposed to the idea of withdrawal for the mission that he wouldn't have done so, even if the District Officer had notified him."

  "The blocks would have been carefully stored and protected."

  "Exactly!" The Terran snapped agreement. "The Crocs are moving east. That fire couldn't have been set more than a few moments ago."

  "They go to Wrexul's to raid everything off-world this side of the mountains." It was as if she thought aloud.

  "I'd say that's it," Rees agreed. "They know, or think they know, that there won't be any force sent out this way from Nagassara. They probably plan to clean up quickly and then go on their pilgrimages."

  This could well explain where the Crocs had gone. Suppose the natives had put only a limited force of jungle fighters into the field? The raiders had begun with the mission, then jumped the post, were now moving purposefully eastward. If so the roller now had to pass a Croc task force, pass through or over natives who were firm in their design to wipe out all off-worlders this side of the mountains.

  "So we must pass them." Again Isiga's mind matched his.

  "Yes."

  Eye of the Spider, see through your enemy's organ of vision. Needful, yes—but possible? Rees shook his head against a surge of fear. He couldn't insert himself inside a sloping, armor-plated Croc skull, see through a pair of those slit-pupiled eyes. He didn't even know if the murderous forces moving east were jungle aborigines, or those who had had enough contact with off-worlders to have garnered a paper-thin patina of stellar civilization, enough of it to have their mental processes slightly twisted into more recognizable patterns of plan and follow-through.

  Rees' knowledge was speedily augmented. Above the roller, but a little ahead, a cleaver of white light cut the night, sliced towards them as might a headsman's knife.

  Completely blinded Rees gripped the control wheel fiercely as the roller bucked, rode up to an almost vertical position on the back wave of the force flash. He feared that they would flop over upside down. Then that buck became a sideslip to the left, carrying the machine away from the river towards the jungle. Rees fought to level out, to bring the roller out of that erratic and broken hop to ground safety.

  Roller treads bit on a solid surface. Then they bounced into the air again, slammed sidewise against a whip of vegetation which gave under the blow, so the machine slewed into the mat of growth. Behind him Rees heard the screams of the frightened children. Then he realized another pair of hands had joined his on the control wheel, that Isiga was lending her strength to his in an effort to ground them.

  Somehow they hit the level once more, or approximate level. Still unable to see more than the fiery flash before his eyes. Rees judged that the nose of the roller was higher than its stern, for their bodies were jammed hard against the back of the seat.

  "A force beam!" Isiga's cry made sense. The Terran felt her fur-hair brush against his arm and shoulder as she turned to the children. Then her voice was a soothing purr as she spoke to them.

  Rees cupped his hands over his eyes. For a moment of icy panic he was shaken. Was he really blind? Or had the flash only dazzled him temporarily? A force beam! Some one of the Croc mop-up squad had the know-how to use, and the possession of, a Patrol weapon. Had the Ffalow's station still been manned—and overwhelmed in a native rush, so the off-world weapons had fallen into Croc claws? Force beams were strictly security limited weapons. How could the Crocs have them?

  But how natives had gotten that piece of armament was certainly no problem of the fugitives; what they did with it was. Rees groped out, caught at a furred arm.

  "Listen!" he demanded urgently. "We did come down on the left bank of the river, didn't we?"

  "That makes a difference?" she said quickly.

  "I'm sure that beam was grounded on the right.

  "We did move to the left. What is the matter with you?" Her voice rose a note or two.

  "Eyes—that flash—I can't see yet."

  A sharp hiss of breath. Then her arm moved. Rees felt a faint touch of air against his lips, guessed she was passing her hand back and forth across his face.

  "Temporary." He hoped that was true. How had she escaped similar blinding? Perhaps her head had been turned so that she had not looked directly at the flash.

  "How are we fixed?" he asked in the next breath.

  Isiga moved about in the seat, once leaning across him as if to see what might lie on the far side of the roller. When she spoke her voice was even, giving a concise report.

  "We rest on flattened brush. But there is a tree of some size leaning from the front part of the machine so we are not level."

  "Behind us?"

  "More brush."

  "No trees?" Salariki eyesight at night was far better than Terran, as he knew. She must be able to see in greater detail.

  "None of any size."

  Rees moved one hand in a sweep over the instrument panel. If the roller itself just had suffered no harm from their rough landing . . .

  "I am going to try backing," he told her. "But you'll have to watch and guide me."

  He fumbled for the right button, pressed it down. The roller lurched from side to side, shook in a way which told him that much of the surface of both treads must be supported on broken bushes above the ground level. Now the machine rocked back and forth, but it was also creeping in retreat, the tree support in front holding them less high. There was a crackling of brush all around. How long did they have before the Crocs swam the river to bag their victims?

  And how badly was the roller damaged by the backwash of the beam? Rees clung to one small hope—that the attackers might have seen that erratic crash landing and that it appeared, from a distance, worse than it really was. The natives might now believe they were firmly grounded. If that were true the Crocs would take their own time about following them, sure of their own ability to track down and take any survivors.

  The jungle car rested on an even beam now, its treads getting a grip on something solid through a mush of leaves, twigs and splintered branches. Also the brilliant pinwheels before Rees' eyes were fading.

  "Now," the Terran appealed again to his companion, "any clear sky around except straight up?" The roller was no 'copter, it could not be jumped from a stand into a vertical rise.

  "Not here."

  To go out of the jungle to the open of the river bank was to offer themselves as an easy sitting target for the beam operator. They could plow ahead, waiting to find a clearing big enough to afford them the necessary hop run.

  "Where's the most open ground path?"

  Again he felt her move on the seat, guessed she was making a careful survey of their surroundings.

  "Trees ahead and to the right. Only brush to the left but that way will return us to the river bank."

  "Behind?" The roller was responding sluggishly.

  "Yes, it is better that way."

  They began a painful retreat, the machine swiped and beaten by branches and vines. Rees became aware that the sonic curtains had failed and a pounding on its button aroused no answering hum. Insect life—Rees flinched as a pin-point of fire lanced the side of his neck just above the shoulder meeting. But this was no time to worry about such minor matters.

  "Wait!" Isiga's hand clamped down on his forearm, until her nails cut his skin. "A little, just a little more and you can turn. No trees there, just bushes and many vines."

  No trees maybe, but vines could be worse in their way. However, he could only try. Rees waited for her cry of "Now!" and swung the control wheel. The roller obeyed awkwardly and they crackled on, beating a path through the resisting jungle wall.

  Chapter 6

  "Get your head down, keep the children back there, well under cover!" Rees ordered and crouched lower on the seat. The whipping lashes of brush and broken vine swept across the top of the roller as they crunched a path onward. The young man blinked frantically. Shadows against shadows, a faint difference in the quality of light, th
e pinwheels fading. He gave a sigh of relief; the blindness was only temporary as he had hoped.

  "The dials, to the left, second on the panel on your side," he got out breathlessly, his words shaken from his lips by the jolts of the roller. "Any change of the indicator?"

  "The bar points straight up."

  "Bang on it with your hand!" Rees rapped out, afraid to accept that without a test.

  "Now the bar swings," she reported a moment later, "but it returns to the same position."

  "Then it's still working—and we aren't followed yet."