by Andre Norton
“This wall in the lake,” Hume asked suddenly, “you are sure it is artificial?”
“Runs too straight to be anything else, and those projections are evenly spaced. I don’t see how it could be natural.”
“We’ll have to be sure.”
Vye thought of that attacking water creature. “No diving in there,” he protested. Hume smiled, a stretch of skin far too tight over his jaw now.
“Not us, at least not us now,” he agreed. “But the Guild will send another survey.”
“What could be the reason for all this?” Vye helped his companion over the loose debris of a cliff slide.
“Information.”
“What?”
“Someone—or something—picked our brains while we were out of our heads. Or—” Hume paused suddenly, looked directly at Vye. “I have a vague feeling that you were able to keep going a lot better than I was. That so?”
“Some of the time,” Vye admitted.
“That checks. Part of me knew what was going on, but was helpless while that other thing,” his smile of moments earlier was wiped away, there was a chill edge in his voice, “picked over my brains, sorted out what it wanted.”
Vye shook his head. “I didn’t feel that way. Just thick-headed—as if I were sleep walking and yet awake.”
“So it took me over, but didn’t go all the way with you. Why? Another question for our list.”
“Maybe—maybe Wass’ techs fixed it so I couldn’t be brain-picked, as you call it,” Vye offered.
Hume nodded. “Could be—would well be. Come on.” He pressed the pace now.
Vye turned to look down the slope suspiciously. Had Hume another warning of menace out of the wood? He could sight no movement there. And from this distance the lake was a topaz sheet of calm which could hide anything. Hume was already several paces ahead, scrambling as if the valley monsters were again on their track.
“What’s the matter?” Vye demanded, as he caught up.
“Night coming.” Which was true. Then Hume added, “If we can reach the flitter before sunset, we’ll have a chance to fly over the lake down there, to make a taping of it before we go.”
The energy of the tablets strengthened them so that by the time they reached the crevice door they were moving with their former agility. For a single second Hume hesitated before that slit, almost as if he feared the test he must make. Then he stepped forward and this time into freedom.
They reached the ledge where the flitter perched just as they had seen it last. How long ago that had been they could not have told, but they suspected that days of haze hung in between. Vye searched the sky. No globes winking there—just the flyer alone.
He took his old seat behind the pilot, watched Hume test the relays and responses in the quick run down of a man who has done this chore many times before. But the other gave a little sigh of relief when he finished.
“She’s all right, we can lift.”
Again they both looked aloft, half fearing to see those malignant herders wink into being to forbid flight. But the sky was as serenely clear of even a drifting cloud as they could hope. Hume pressed a button and they arose vertically with an even progress totally unlike the leap which had taken them out of Wass’ camp.
Well above the cliff wall they hovered, and were able to see below the round bowl of the valley prison. Hume touched controls, the flitter descended slowly just above the center of the lake. And from this position they were able to sight the other peculiarity of that body of water, that it was perfectly oval in shape, far too perfect to be an undeveloped product of nature. Hume took a round disk from his equipment belt, fitted it carefully into a slot on the control board and pressed the button below. Then he sent the flitter in a weaving zigzag course well above the surface of the water, so that eventually the flyer passed over every foot of its surface.
And from above, in spite of the turgid quality of the liquid, they could see what did rest on the bottom of that oval. The wall with its sharp corner which Vye had noted from shore level was only part of a water covered erection. It made a design when seen from overhead, a six-pointed star surrounding an oval and in the midst of that oval a black blot which they could not identify.
Hume brought the flitter over in one last sweep. “That’s it. We have a full taping.”
“What do you think it is?”
“A device set there by an intelligent being, and set a long time ago. This valley wasn’t arranged over night, six months ago—or even a year ago. We’ll have to let the experts tell us when and for what reason. Now, let’s head for home!”
He brought the flitter up and over the valley wall, flying southwest so that they passed over the gap which was the main entrance to the trap. And now he tried the com unit, endeavoring to pick up a signal on which they could beam in for a safe ride.
“That’s odd.” Under Hume’s control the direction finder passed back and forth without bringing any answering code click from the mike. “We may be too far in the mountains to pick up the beam. I wonder….” He swept the needle in another direction, slightly to the left.
A crackle spat from the mike. Vye could not read code but the very fury and intensity of that sound suggested panic—even terror.
“What’s that?”
Hume spoke without looking away from the control board. “Alarm.”
“From the safari?”
“No. Wass.” For a long second Hume sat very still, his fingers quiet. The flitter was on the automatic course, taking them out of the mountains, and Vye thought that their air speed was such they were already well removed from that sinister valley.
Hume made a slight adjustment to a dial, and the flitter banked, coming around on another course. Once more he spun the finder of the com. This time he was answered with a series of well-spaced clicks which lacked the urgency of that other call. Hume listened until the code rattled into silence again.
“They’re all right at the safari camp.”
“But Wass is in trouble. So what does that matter?” Vye wanted to know.
“It matters this much.” Hume spoke slowly as if he must convince himself as well as Vye. “I’m the Guild man on Jumala, and the Guild man is responsible for all civs.”
“You can’t call him your client!”
Hume shook his head. “No, he’s no client. But he’s human.”
It narrowed down to that when a man was on the frontier worlds—humans stood together. Vye wanted to deny it, but his own emotions, as well as the centuries of age-old tradition, argued him down. Wass was a Veep, one of the criminal parasites dabbling in human misery along more than one solar lane. But he was also human and, as one of their own species, had his claim on them.
Vye watched Hume take over the controls, felt the flitter answer another change of course, then heard the frantic yammer of the distress call as they leveled off to ride its beam in to the hidden camp.
“Automatic.” Hume had turned down the volume of the receiver so that the clicks in the mike no longer were so strident. “Set on maximum and left that way.”
“They had a force barrier around the camp and they knew about the globes and the watchers.” Vye tried to imagine what had happened in that woods clearing.
“The barrier might have shorted. And without the flitter they would have been pinned.”
“Could have taken off in the spacer.”
“Wass doesn’t have the reputation of letting any project get out of his hands.”
Vye remembered. “Oh—your billion credit deal.”
To his surprise Hume laughed. “Seems all very far and out of orbit now, doesn’t it, Lansor? Yes, our billion credit deal—but that was thought out before we knew there were more players around the table than we counted. I wonder….”
But what he wondered he did not put into words and a moment later he added over his shoulder, “Better try to get some rest, boy. We’ve some time to a set-down.”
Vye did sleep, deeply, dreamlessly. And he rouse
d after a gentle shaking to see a beam of light in the sky ahead, though around them was the solid darkness of night.
“That’s a warning,” Hume explained. “And I can’t raise any reply from the camp except a repeat of the distress call. If there is anyone there now, he can’t or won’t answer.”
Against that column of light they could make out the sky-pointed taper of the spacer and the auto-pilot landed them beside that ship in the middle of an area well lighted by the steady shaft of light from the tripod standing where the atom lamp had been on the night they had made their escape from camp.
Climbing stiffly from the small flyer they advanced with caution. A very few minutes later Hume slid his ray tube back into its belt loop.
“Unless they’ve holed up in the spacer—and I can’t see why they’d do that—this camp’s deserted. And they haven’t taken any equipment with them except maybe a few items they could back-pack.”
The ship proved as empty of life as the campsite. A wall seat pulled out too hastily so that it was jammed awry, the com cabin suggested that the leave-taking, when and for what reason, had been a matter of some emergency. Hume did not touch the tape set to keep on broadcasting the call for assistance.
“What now?” Vye wanted to know as they completed the search.
“The safari camp first—and a call for the Patrol.”
“Look here,” Vye set down the ration container he had found, was emptying it with vast satisfaction of one who had been too long on tablets, “if you beam the Patrol you’ll have to talk, won’t you?”
Hume went on fitting new charges into his ray tube. “The Patrol has to have a full report. There’s no way of bypassing that. Yes, we’ll have to give all the story. You needn’t worry.” He snapped closed the load chamber. “I can clear you all the way. You’re the victim, remember.”
“I wasn’t thinking about that.”
“Boy.” Hume tossed the tube up in the air, caught it in his plasta-hand. “I went into this deal with my eyes wide open—why doesn’t matter very much now. In fact,” he stared beyond Vye out into the empty, lighted camp, “I’ve begun to wonder about a lot of things—maybe too late. No—we’ll call the Patrol and we’ll do it not because it is Wass and his men out there, but because we’re human and they’re human, and there’s a nasty set-up here which has already sucked in other humans for its own purposes.”
The skeleton in the valley! And how very close they had been themselves to joining that unknown in his permanent residence.
“So now we make time—back to the safari camp. Get our message off to the Patrol and then we’ll try to trace Wass and see what we can do. Jumala is off a regular route. The Patrol won’t be here tomorrow at sunrise, no matter how much we wish a scouter would planet then.”
Vye was quiet as he stowed in the flitter again. As Hume had said, events moved fast. A little while ago he had wanted to settle with this Out-Hunter, wring out of him not only an explanation for his being here, but claim satisfaction for the humiliation of being moved about to suit some others’ purposes. Now he was willing to defeat Wass, bring in the Patrol, go up against whatever hid in that lake up there, providing Hume was not the loser. He tried to think why that was so and could not, he only knew it was the truth.
They were both silent as they took off from Wass’ deserted camp, sped away over the black blot of the woodland towards the safari headquarters on the plains. There were stars above again but no globes. Just as they had won their freedom from the valley, so they moved without escort on the plains.
But the lights were there—not impinging on the flitter, or patrolling along its line of flight. No, they hung in a glowing cluster ahead when in the dawn the flitter shot away from the woods, headed for the landmark of the safari camp. A crown of lights circled over the camp site, as if those below were in a state of siege.
Hume aimed straight for them and this time the bobbing circle split wide open, broke to left and right. Vye looked below. Though the grayness of the morning was still hardly more than dusk he could not miss those humps spaced at intervals on the land, just beyond the unseen line of the force barrier. The lights above, the beasts below, the safari camp was under guard.
12
*
“There is only one way they could be moving—toward the mountains.” Hume stood in the open space among the bubble tents, facing him the four men of the camp, the three civs and Rovald. “You say it’s been seven days, planet time, since I left here. They may have been five days on that trail. If possible we have to stop them before they reach that valley.”
“A fantastic story.” Chambriss wore the affronted expression of a man who expected no interference with his own concerns. Then catching Hume’s eye he added, “Not that we doubt you, Hunter. We have the evidence in those dumb brutes waiting out there. However, by your own story, this Wass is an outside-the-law Veep, on this planet secretly for criminal purposes. Surely there is no reason for us to risk our safety in his behalf. Are you certain he is in any danger at all? You and this young man here have, by your testimony, been into the enemies’ territory and have been able to get out again.”
“Through a series of fortunate chances which might never occur again.” Hume was patient, too patient, Rovald seemed to think. His hand moved, he was holding a ray tube so that a simple movement of the wrist could send a crisping blast across all the rest of the party.
“I say, stop this yapping and get out there and pick up the Veep!”
“I intend to—after I call the Patrol.”
Rovald’s tube was now aimed directly at Hume. “No Patrol!” he ordered.
“This wrangling has gone far enough.” It was Yactisi who spoke with an authority which startled them all. And as their attention swung to him, he was already in action.
Rovald cried out, the weapon spun from his fingers, fingers which were slowly reddening. Yactisi nodded with satisfaction and he held his electo pole ready for a second attack. Vye scooped up the tube which had whirled across the ground to strike against his borrowed boot.
“I’ll set the call for the Patrol, then I’ll try to locate Wass,” Hume stated.
“Sensible procedure,” Yactisi approved in his dry voice. “You believe that you are now immune to whatever force this alien installation controls?”
“It would seem so.”
“Then, of course, you must go.”
“Why?” Chambriss countered for the second time. “Suppose he isn’t so immune after all? Suppose he gets out there and is captured again? He’s our pilot—do you want to be planet bound here?
“This man is also a pilot.” Starns indicated Rovald, who was nursing his numb hand.
“Since he, too, is one of these criminals, he’s not to be trusted!” Chambriss shot back. “Hunter, I demand that you take us off planet at once! And it is only fair to inform you that I also intend to prefer charges against you and against the Guild. Empty world! Just how empty have we found this world?”
“But, Gentlehomo,” Starns showed no signs of any emotion but eager curiosity, “to be here at this time is a privilege we could not hope to equal except by good fortune! The T-Casts will be avid for our stories.”
What had that to do with the matter, puzzled Vye. But he saw Starns’ reminder produce a quick change in Chambriss.
“The T-Casts,” he repeated, his expression of anger smoothing away. “Yes, of course, this is, in a manner of speaking, a truly historic occasion. We are in a unique position!”
Had Yactisi smiled? That change of lip line had been so slight Vye could not call it a smile. But Starns appeared to have found the right way to handle Chambriss. And it was the same little man who offered his services in another way when he said, diffidently to Hume:
“I have some experience with coms, Hunter. Do you wish me to send your message and take over the unit until you return? I gather,” he added with a certain delicacy, “that it will not be expedient for your gearman to engage in that duty now.”
So it was that Starns was installed in the com cabin of the spacer, sending out the request for Patrol aid, while Rovald was locked in the storage compartment of the same ship, pending arrival of those same authorities. As Hume sorted out supplies and Vye loaded them into the waiting flitter, Yactisi approached the Hunter.
“You have a definite plan of search?”
“Just to cast north from their camp. If they’ve been gone long enough to hit the foothills we may be able to sight them climbing. Otherwise, we’ll go all the way up to the valley, wait for them there.”
“You don’t believe that they will be released after they have been—processed?”
Hume shook his head. “I don’t think we would have been free, Gentlehomo, if it hadn’t been for a series of fortunate accidents.”
“Yes, though you didn’t give us many details about that, Hunter.”
Hume put down the needler he had been charging. He studied Yactisi across that weapon.
“Who are you?” His voice was soft but carried a snap.
For the first time Vye saw the tall, lean civ really smile.
“A man of many interests, Hunter—shall we let it go at that for the present? Though I assure you that Wass is not one of them in the way you might believe.”
Gray eyes met brown, held so straightly. Then Hume spoke. “I believe you. But I have told you the truth.”
“I have never doubted that—only the amount of it. There must be more talking later on—you understand that?”
“I never thought otherwise.” Hume set the needler inside the flitter. The civ smiled again, this time including Vye in that evidence of good will before he walked away.
Hume made no comment. “That does it,” he told his companion. “Still want to go?”
“If you do—and you can’t do it alone.” No man could take on the valley and Wass and his men.
Hume made no comment. They had rested briefly after their return to the safari camp, and Vye had been supplied with clothing from Hume’s bags, so that now he wore the uniform of the Guild. He went armed, too, with the equipment belt taken from Rovald and that other’s weapons, needler and tube. At least they started on their dubious rescue mission with every aid the safari camp could muster.