There was a sharp ping of warning. Above the visa-screen flashed a signal.
"The ramp!" Andas jumped for the ladder. Someone was leaving the ship, had been ready to depart almost as soon as they completed fin-down. And he had no trouble in guessing who that was. They must prevent Turpyn from reaching whomever he had come to meet, get him first and learn what danger lay ahead.
Andas swung down at top speed, Yolyos so close behind that once or twice the Salariki's heels almost bruised his fingers.
"What is it—where are we?" Elys asked. Behind her stood Tsiwon.
Andas, unwilling to lose a minute, did not take time to answer, pushing past the girl, heading for the ramp hatch.
They had made good time. As their sandals flapped upon that bridge over the ground, still hot from their rockets, they saw Turpyn out in the middle of the landing area. Andas had expected to see him running, heading for the protection of the growth. Once in there, the prince feared, they would have little chance of finding him.
But the Veep had slowed to a halt and was looking about him like a completely bewildered man. If he had left the ship with a goal in mind, it would seem he had lost his guides. He turned first this way and then that, shading his eyes against the strong sunlight, searching the vegetation wall for some break not there.
Andas pounded down the ramp, Yolyos still behind him. He expected Turpyn to hear, to turn and see them, to run. But the Veep continued to look about as if nothing mattered save to find what he sought.
He did not turn to look at them, even when they came pounding up. Andas caught at his shoulder and jerked him half around, ready to demand answers. But he never asked them, for he had not seen such an expression on the Veep's face before. Blank astonishment was as easy to read as if Turpyn had spent a life time cultivating the mobile features of a tri-dee actor.
"It's—it's gone!" He spoke as if to himself, trying to impress the fact of a loss on his own mind.
"What did you expect to find?" Andas kept his hold and now gave the other a quick shake to break through the maze of bewilderment that held him.
"But it can't be gone!" Apparently Turpyn was shattered. It was as if, up to this point, he had been armored by some certainty that he need fear nothing. Now that certainty had been reft from him.
"What is gone?" Andas began to wonder if the man had been shocked out of his full senses. He spoke slowly, spacing his words, in an effort to get through.
"The—the port. Wenditkover—the port!" Turpyn sounded impatient, as if he expected Andas to know already.
The name meant nothing to the prince. He glanced at the Salariki who made a gesture signifying like puzzlement.
"What is Wenditkover?" Andas asked again.
But then came a call from the ramp. Grasty was plunging down it at a pace that might be fatal for his footing unless he slowed.
The councilor's voice shrilled higher and higher as he ran, but Andas could not understand the words he sputtered. He had apparently in his excitement abandoned Basic for the tongue of Thrisk. His face was red under the muddy, greasy surface skin, and he pounded one fat fist against another as he spat forth what could only be abuse—aimed at Turpyn.
The Veep stood very still. That cloud of shocked amazement lifted from his face. He was once more the disciplined, enigmatic man of the prison. Andas could have cursed Grasty. If the councilor had not arrived at just that moment, they might have been able to learn something from Turpyn. Seeing the man now, he was sure it would take more than any art he possessed to force the Veep to talk.
Still half screaming, Grasty reached them. He paid no attention to Andas, but aimed a wild blow at the Veep, who avoided it easily. Then, not quite sure what or how it had happened, Andas found himself spinning away. He would have hit the ground had not Yolyos's arm, sturdy as a city wall, steadied him.
Grasty, though, had hit the ground with force enough to expel the air from his lungs in an explosive grunt. Turpyn stood over him, rubbing the knuckles of one hand. He was as impassive as one who had watched Grasty take a tumble from a clumsy stumble.
The councilor wheezed, clutching his protuberant belly with both hands, his mouth working, but soundlessly as if he had run out of words as well as breath in that short encounter. Turpyn stepped away. He looked at Andas, at Yolyos, and then at that wall of green. Then he turned toward the ship.
It was then that the Salariki took a hand. Though the Veep had handled both Andas (who had prided himself on his skill in unarmed combat) and the clumsy Grasty with contemptuous ease, he learned that the warrior from Sargol was different. Yolyos's move was made so swiftly that his body, big as it was, seemed to be a blur. There followed an instant of struggle, and Turpyn again stood still as Yolyos loomed over him, his extended claws digging into the Veep's shoulder muscles.
So holding him, Yolyos shook him gently, or what seemed gently. Yet Turpyn's mouth twitched, and Andas did not miss the two telltale red spots beneath a couple of claws.
"So this place is Wenditkover. You must excuse our ignorance, Turpyn. Not having had your advantages, we do not know the name. I think that you will explain a few matters. First, where is Wenditkover—not in relation to us at the moment, of course, but rather in relation to where we thought we were going? Second, what is—or was—Wenditkover? At present you must admit it is very little. Third, who—or what—did you expect to find here? We have a great deal of time, since there is no use trying to lift ship until we know why we came here in the first place."
"And in that time, Turpyn"—the Salariki's voice was a rasping purr of promise that made Andas glad he did not stand in the Veep's place—"there can be more than one way of asking questions. Politely in this fashion, or more roughly. That you have tried to betray us in some manner is very evident. So there is no reason why we should treat you gently."
Andas believed that Yolyos would do exactly as he hinted. The Salariki's voice carried complete conviction. And it must have impressed the Veep, because talk he did, in short, toneless sentences. Nothing he said had any reason to make them happier.
"Wenditkover is a Jack port—or it was. I don't know what has happened. Or"—emotion touched his voice fleetingly—"how everything could have gone this way—" He shook his head. "It doesn't make sense. You'd think no one had finned down here for years. And it is a regular refit and unload station."
"With a Guild fence in residence?" suggested the Salariki. "Like that pirate's hold of Waystar?"
"Smaller, but like, yes.
"I tell you," the Veep continued then, "I don't understand this at all! There should be buildings here—maybe a ship refitting. It couldn't all just disappear!"
"Suppose"—Yolyos did not loose his hold on the Veep, rather propelled the man ahead of him toward the green walls—"we just go over and see what is behind this growth."
Andas matched them stride for stride. But Grasty remained where he was on the ground, breathing easier now, but watching the Veep with a murderous glare, a glare that perhaps included the rest of them, too. Had the councilor been armed, Andas would never have turned his back on him. But the prince did not believe the fellow was dangerous now, not at least for a while.
It was when they approached the green wall more closely that they saw buildings were still there, at least in part. But they had been taken over by a jungle of growth so that only small vestiges were visible.
"It might be fast-growing vegetation," Andas suggested. But that shadow in the back of his mind was darker. No matter how fast growing that vegetation was, it could not have taken such a stranglehold in less than years. Yet Turpyn had been confident that this was a well-known Jack port, important enough for Guild connections.
"Not that fast." It was Turpyn who answered. "And this isn't that kind of growth either."
"You have been here before then?" Yolyos asked.
"I was taken from here—at least my last memory—"
That struck home like a blow. Andas had only one question: "What year—galactic?"
/> For a long moment Turpyn did not reply. Was he trying to reckon the time or change some planet accounting into galactic? Or had the question of time startled him into that silence? But at last he spoke.
"The year 2265."
Thirty-five years after Andas's reckoning, forty-five after Yolyos's—and differing widely again from that of Elys and Tsiwon! Time—Andas's shadow fear was gathering substance—how much time lay behind him in that prison?
"You say 2265," Yolyos commented. "And how long would you say that this port of yours has been abandoned?"
"I do not guess." But Andas thought that sounded rather as if the Veep did not choose to. Also he knew that once implanted in Turpyn's mind, that fear would be as hard a companion for him as it was for the rest of them.
"Since we know now what Wenditkover once was and what you expected to find here, may we also believe that you fed its tape into the ship's pilot?" If the date bothered the Salariki, he did not show it, but had returned to the business of getting straight answers from Turpyn.
"I recognized the symbol on one of the other tapes. It was easy to palm and exchange." He was impatient, as if they should have guessed the truth at once.
"But you still have the Inyanga tape?"
"Yes."
"And I think that we can believe that Inyanga will not have disappeared into some waste of time as thoroughly as this has," Yolyos continued. "So—"
He staggered back, the coverall on Turpyn's shoulders ripped, there were red furrows on the skin beneath, but the Veep had broken that hold. He burst from them, heading into the mass of growth where the ruins of the buildings offered so small a defense against the jungle.
Andas started after him when Yolyos's voice, having the snap of an order, brought him up short.
"Let him go. You cannot find him in that tangle. And once he sees that there is nothing there for him, he will come back."
"Liar—cheat!" The rasping cry came from behind. Grasty, bent over, his hands clasping his belly, his face gray, tottered toward them, this time crying his abuse in Basic. Then he sputtered again in his own tongue. But he did not follow the Veep. Perhaps the folly of such a chase struck him as quickly as it had the Salariki.
"Liar—cheat?" repeated Yolyos. "You seem even more heated over this matter than the prince here, yet he had good reason to believe he was on the way home. Or, Councilor, did you have reason to think that you were headed in some other direction? I remember you were talking confidentially once to our late guide. Had you made a separate deal with him? Did you think we were coming to Thrisk?"
"But there were no tapes marked Thrisk." However, Andas thought Yolyos had hit upon something. When the Salariki growled that question, Grasty had actually flinched. The attack on him must have shaken him as badly as the first sight of this deserted port had Turpyn. And while he was in this state, they had better get to the bottom of any private deal he had thought he had made.
"I am Chief Councilor of Thrisk." Grasty might have been trying for dignity, but he could not stand straight. And he groaned and clutched at the belly so cruelly outlined by his clothing. "I have resources—"
"And you made an offer to Turpyn," Yolyos supplied when the man seemed unable to continue. "Where did you think we were going?"
"He said Kuan-Ti. They have a strong tie with Thrisk."
"And you believed him?" Yolyos was plainly amused.
"He was to get a million credits." Grasty choked out the words as if each hurt.
A million—what kind of personal fortune did Grasty have to draw on? Or did he intend for that to come from the safekeeping of Thrisk? Or had he intended not to pay at all, having once achieved his purpose? Andas suspected the last as the truth. Two of them making a bargain neither intended to keep—well might Grasty curse.
"It would seem that your trust was not mutual," commented Yolyos. "I do not think you are going to see Kuan-Ti, nor Thrisk for a while—"
"Help!"
The cry came from the ship, not the woods into which Turpyn had plunged. Tsiwon stood at the foot of the ramp beckoning wildly. And crumpled at his feet lay Elys. Andas reached them first and went down on his knees beside her.
She lay with her eyes closed, and those odd growths on her neck had an unhealthy look, shriveled, puckering up in scaled patches.
"She said," Tsiwon cried out breathily in his thin voice, "that she must have water, that she smelled it and must reach it or she would die. She started to run—in that direction—" He pointed.
"Aquatic race." Yolyos had gone down on one knee, too. "I wonder how she has managed so long. But she will have to have her water or die. There is undoubtedly a limit on the time she can remain dry."
"But her prison cell seemed no different from mine—"
"We don't know what type of mind-lock we were in back there. The point is—she needs it now and in a hurry." The Salariki scrambled to his feet. "Can you carry her? If so, I'll break trail."
Andas got to his feet, glad she was so light of frame—unusually so. He had not been aware on the ship that she was so thin. Her bones seemed almost starting through her pale skin. Maybe that was caused by dehydration.
They headed to the spot Tsiwon had pointed out. There Yolyos went into action, beating down, breaking off branches and vines, clearing a rough path through which Andas could steer a way with Elys resting across his shoulder. She had not moved or made a sound since he had picked her up.
"She's right—water—" Yolyos was sniffing, as though water might have a scent—though at that it might, for the Salariki. For a race whose sense of smell was so acute that they habitually wore scent bags about their persons, the smelling of water might not be too great a feat.
What had Yolyos endured without his scents? It was customary that off-worlders coming to Sargol had to steep themselves in aromatic odors before having any dealings with the natives. What had Yolyos endured without his scents—pent in the ship? It must have been very hard on him, yet never once had he complained.
They broke through a last screen of brush and came out at the side of a pool.
"What do we do?" Andas was at a loss.
"No telling how deep this is. Do you swim?"
"Yes." Andas laid the girl down and unsealed his coverall. The air was humid, warm enough so that he felt no chill. He lowered himself cautiously and found that the waters curled only slightly above his waist. Good enough—he could manage.
"Let me have her."
Yolyos lowered the limp body into his grasp. The coverall dragged as he dipped her below the surface, save for her face. Her hair floated out, hardly differing in shade from the water weeds. Andas steadied her as best he could and hoped that the pool had no dwellers interested in meat meals. There were always unpleasant surprises on new worlds, and only a great emergency would drive a man to take such a chance as this.
Elys sighed and her eyes opened. Already those scaled patches on her throat were less shrunken, more the normal color of her skin. She wriggled in his hold.
"Let me go!" There was such force in her order that he did that. She pushed away, disappearing under the surface of the water before he could prevent it. He started to splash after her when she bobbed to the surface some distance away.
"This is my world. Let me be!"
Already she seemed to have regained her vigor. If that was the way she wanted it—but she had already gone under the water again. Andas climbed out of the pool and found the Salariki waiting with handfuls of dried grass. The prince toweled himself as dry as he could with those and dressed again, wishing he had fresh clothing to wear.
Yolyos had gone a little way along the pool side. From a bush there hung festoons of creamy flowers, and the Salariki buried his face deep among them, his wide chest rising and falling in deep breaths as he drew in all of their scent his lungs would hold.
-5-
It was a new Elys who finally emerged from the pool in answer to Andas's calls, though it was apparent that she came reluctantly. As a starving man might
have reacted to some weeks of careful feeding, her too-thin body was normally rounded once again.
"I feel"—she flung her arms wide as she still stood with her feet awash—"like a priestess of Lo-Ange who has flung her name tablet into the sea and so is reborn again!"
Andas was impatiently pacing up and down. A thought pricked at him. What if Turpyn had made his way back to the ship? Neither Grasty nor Tsiwon would be prepared, or perhaps wish, to prevent the Veep's taking off to locate some other Guild lair. By lingering here they were offering him a chance to do just that. And to be marooned here—no!
He looked to the Salariki, but Yolyos had wandered on, like a man drunk with Formian wine, or else bemused with happy smoke, to sniff at some purple veined leaves, which, after smelling, he crushed between his hands, rubbing the resultant mass up and down his wide chest. Their aromatic scent was strong enough to reach even Andas's nostrils.
"We have to get back to the ship!" The prince said to Elys. "If Turpyn tries to take off—"
But she was too fascinated by her own form of refreshment, stooping to catch up palmfuls of water, splashing about like a child. He was thoroughly exasperated by both of them.
"Ahhhhhh—" A rumble of sound from Yolyos, who had now wandered out of sight, was startling enough to bring Andas on the run.
The screen of flowering and scented growth that had been planted about the pool was a thin one. And the prince pushed through it to see the alien facing a small glade.
For a moment of surprise and awe, Andas was misled enough to think he might indeed be fronting the owners of this overgrown garden. Then he saw the truth. Tree trunks had been rough-hewn into those figures, gathered in a half circle about a spring bubbling from a stand of rocks. Bleached, perhaps by some rotting process of the jungle from which they had been hacked, they had an aura of life. Their bodies were humanoid, if gross and clumsy, but their faces were pitiless and alien. Some jungle vines had rooted on their bulbous heads, perhaps by accident, perhaps by long ago design, presenting them with tendrils of hair. And these vines produced purple blooms around which buzzed a multitude of insects. But there was also a sickly scent that made Andas give an exclamation of disgust and retreat a step or two.