by Andre Norton
7. UNWELCOME GUIDE
There was a small eruption of earth and stone as the hound came alive,fighting to reach its tormentors. The resulting din was deafening.Shann, avoiding by a hand's breadth a snap of jaws with power to crushhis leg into bone powder and mangled flesh, cuffed Togi across her noseand buried his hands in the fur about Taggi's throat as he heaved themale wolverine back from the struggling monster. He shouted orders, andto his surprise Togi did obey, leaving him free to yank Taggi away.Perhaps neither wolverine had expected the full fury of the hound.
Though he suffered a slash across the back of one hand, delivered by theover-excited Taggi, in the end Shann was able to get both animals awayfrom the hole, now corked so effectively by the slavering thing.Thorvald was actually laughing as he watched his younger companion inaction.
"This ought to slow up the beetles! If they haul their little doggieback, it's apt to take out some of its rage on them, and I'd like to seethem dig around it."
Considering that the monstrous head was swinging from side to side in acollar of what seemed to be immovable rocks, Shann thought Thorvaldright. He went down on his knees beside the wolverines, soothing themwith hand and voice, trying to get them to obey his orders willingly.
"Ha!" Thorvald brought his mud-stained hands together with a clap, thesharp sound attracting the attention of both animals.
Shann scrambled up, swung out his bleeding hand in the simple motionwhich meant to hunt, being careful to signal down the valley westward.Taggi gave a last reluctant growl at the hound, to be answered by one ofits ear-torturing howls, and then trotted off, Togi tagging behind.
Thorvald caught Shann's slashed hand, inspecting the bleeding cut. Fromthe aid packet at his belt he brought out powder and a strip ofprotecting plasta-flesh to cleanse and bind the wound.
"You'll do," he commented. "But we'd better get out of here before fulldark."
The small paradise of the valley was no safe campsite. It could not beso long as that monstrosity on the hillside behind them roared andhowled its rage to the darkening sky. Trailing the wolverines, the mencaught up with the animals drinking from a small spring and thankfullyshared that water. Then they pushed on, not able to forget thatsomewhere in the peaks about must lurk the Throg flyer ready to attackon sight.
Only darkness could not be held off by the will of men. Here in the openthere was no chance to use the torch. As long as they were within thevalley boundaries the phosphorescent bushes marked a path. But by thecoming of complete darkness they were once more out in a region of barerock.
The wolverines had killed a brace of skitterers, consuming hide and softbones as well as the meager flesh which was not enough to satisfy theirhunger. However, to Shann's relief, they did not wander too far ahead.And as the men stopped at last on a ledge where a fall of rock gave themsome limited shelter both animals crowded in against the humans, addingthe heat of their bodies to the slight comfort of that cramped restingplace.
From time to time Shann was startled out of a troubled half sleep by thehowl of the hound. Luckily that sound never seemed any louder. If theThrogs had caught up with their hunter, and certainly they must havedone so by now, they either could not, or would not free it from thetrap. Shann dozed again, untroubled by any dreams, to awake hearing theshrieks of clak-claks. But when he studied the sky he was able to sightnone of the cliff-dwelling Warlockian bats.
"More likely they are paying attention to our friend back in thevalley," Thorvald said dryly, rightly reading Shann's glance to theclouds overhead. "Ought to keep them busy."
Clak-claks were meat eaters, only they preferred their chosen prey weakand easy to attack. The imprisoned hound would certainly attract theirkind. And those shrill cries now belling through the mountain heightsought to draw everyone of their species within miles.
"There it is!" Thorvald, pulling himself to his feet by a rock handhold,gazed westward, his gaunt face eager.
Shann, expecting no less than a cruising Throg ship, searched for coveron their perch. Perhaps if they flattened themselves behind the fall ofstones, they might be able to escape attention. Yet Thorvald made nomove into hiding. And so Shann followed the line of the other's fixedstare.
Before and below them lay a maze of heights and valleys, sharp drops,and saw-toothed rises. But on the far rim of that section of badlandsshone the green of a Warlockian sea rippling on to the only dimly seenhorizon. They were now within sight of their goal.
Had they had one of the exploration sky-flitters from the overrun camp,they could have walked its beach sands within the hour. Instead, theyfought their way through a Devil-designed country for the next two days.Twice they had narrow escapes from the Throg ship--or ships--whichcontinued to sweep across the rugged line of the coast, and only a quickdive to cover, wasting precious time cowering like trapped animals,saved them from discovery. But at least the hound did not bay again onthe tangled trail they left, and they hoped that the trap and theclak-claks had put that monster permanently out of service.
On the third day they came down to one of those fiords which tonguedinland, fringing the coast. There had been no lack of hunting in thenarrow valleys through which they had threaded, so both men andwolverines were well fed. Though animal fur wore better than the nowtattered uniforms of the men.
"Now where?" Shann asked.
Would he now learn the purpose driving Thorvald on to this coastland?Certainly such broken country afforded good hiding, but no betterconcealment than the mountains of the interior.
The Survey officer turned slowly around on the shingle, studying theheights behind them as well as the angle of the inlet where the waveletslapped almost at their battered boot tips. Opening his treasured mapcase, he began a patient checking of landmarks against several of thestrips he carried. "We'll have to get on down to the true coast."
Shann leaned against the trunk of a conical branched mountain tree,pulling absently at the shreds of wine-colored bark being shed inseasonal change. The chill they had known in the upper valleys wassucceeded here by a humid warmth. Spring was becoming a summer such asthis northern continent knew. Even the fresh wind, blowing in from theouter sea, had already lost some of the bite they had felt two daysbefore when its salt-laden mistiness had first struck them.
"Then what do we do there?" Shann persisted.
Thorvald brought over the map, his black-rimmed nail tracing a routedown one of the fiords, slanting out to indicate a lace of islandsextending in a beaded line across the sea.
"We head for these."
To Shann that made no sense at all. Those islands ... why, they wouldoffer less chance of establishing a safe base than the broken land inwhich they now stood. Even the survey scouts had given those spots ofsea-encircled earth the most cursory examination from the air.
"Why?" he asked bluntly. So far he had followed orders because they hadfor the most part made sense. But he was not giving obedience toThorvald as a matter of rank alone.
"Because there is something out there, something which may make all thedifference now. Warlock isn't an empty world."
Shann jerked free a long thong of loose bark, rolling it between hisfingers. Had Thorvald cracked? He knew that the officer had disagreedwith the findings of the team and had been an unconvinced minority ofone who had refused to subscribe to the report that Warlock had nonative intelligent life and therefore was ready and waiting for humansettlement because it was technically an empty world. But to continue tocling to that belief without a single concrete proof was certainly asign of mental imbalance.
And Thorvald was regarding him now with frowning impatience. You weresupposed to humor delusions, weren't you? Only, could you surrender andhumor a wild idea which might mean your death? If Thorvald wanted to goisland-hopping in chance of discovering what never had existed, Shannneed not accompany him. And if the officer tried to use force, well,Shann was armed with a stunner, and had, he believed, more control overthe wolverines. Perhaps if he merely gave lip agreement to thisproject.... Only he
didn't believe, noting the light deep in those grayeyes holding on him, that anybody could talk Thorvald out of thisparticular obsession.
"You don't believe me, do you?" The impatience arose hotly in thatdemand.
"Why shouldn't I?" Shann tried to temporize. "You've had a lot ofexploration experience; you should know about such things. I don'tpretend to be any authority."
Thorvald refolded the map and placed it in the case. Then he pulled atthe sealing of his blouse, groping in an inner secret pocket. Heuncurled his fingers to display his treasure.
On his palm lay a coin-shaped medallion, bone-white but possessing anodd luster which bone would not normally show. And it was carved. Shannput out a finger, though he had a strange reluctance to touch theobject. When he did he experienced a sensation close to the tingle of amild electric shock. And once he had made that contact, he was alsoimpelled to pick up that disk and examine it more closely.
The carved pattern was very intricate and had been done with greatdelicacy and skill, though the whorls, oddly shaped knobs, ribbontracings, made no connected design he could determine. After a moment ortwo of study, Shann became aware that his eyes, following those twistsand twirls, were "fixed," that it required a distinct effort to lookaway from the thing. Feeling some of that same alarm as he had knownwhen he first heard the wailing of the Throg hound, he let the disk fallback into Thorvald's hold, even more disturbed when he discovered thatto relinquish his grasp required some exercise of will.
"What is it?"
Thorvald restored the coin to his hiding place.
"You tell me. I can say this much, there is no listing for anything evenremotely akin to this in the Archives."
Shann's eyes widened. He absently rubbed the fingers which had held thebone coin--if it was a coin--back and forth across the torn front of hisblouse. That tingle ... did he still feel it? Or was his imagination atwork again? But an object not listed in the exhaustive Survey Archiveswould mean some totally new civilization, a new stellar race.
"It is definitely a created article," the Survey officer continued. "Andit was found on the beach of one of those sea islands."
"Throg?" But Shann already knew the answer to that.
"Throg work--_this_?" Thorvald was openly scornful. "Throgs have noconception of such art. You must have seen their metal plates--those arethe beetle-heads' idea of beauty. Have those the slightest resemblanceto this?"
"Then who made it?"
"Either Warlock has--or once had--a native race advanced enough in awell-established form of civilization to develop such a sophisticatedtype of art, or there have been other visitors from space here before usand the Throgs. And the latter possibility I don't believe----"
"Why?"
"Because this was carved of bone or an allied substance. We haven't beenquite able to identify it in the labs, but it is basically organicmaterial. It was found exposed to the weather and yet it is in perfectcondition, could have been carved any time within the past five years.It has been handled, yes, but not roughly. And we have come acrossevidences of no other star-cruising races or species save ourselves andthe Throgs. No, I say this was made here on Warlock, not too long ago,and by intelligent beings of a very high grade of civilization."
"But they would have cities," protested Shann. "We've been here formonths, explored all over this continent. We would have seen them orsome traces of them."
"An old race, maybe," Thorvald mused, "a very old race, perhaps indecline, reduced to a remnant in numbers with good reason to retire intohiding. No, we've discovered no cities, no evidence of a native culturepast or present. But this--" he touched the front of his blouse--"wasfound on the shore of an island. We may have been looking in the wrongplace for our natives."
"The sea...." Shann glanced with new interest at the green water surgingin wavelets along the edge of the fiord.
"Just so, the sea!"
"But scouts have been here for more than a year, one team or another.And nobody saw anything or found any traces."
"All four of our base camps were set inland, our explorations along thecoast were mainly carried out by flitter, except for one party--the onewhich found this. And there may be excellent local reasons why anynative never showed himself to us. For that matter, they may not be ableto exist on land at all, any more than we could live without artificialaids in the sea."
"Now----?"
"Now we must make a real attempt to find them if they do exist anywherenear here. A friendly native race could make all the difference in theworld in any struggle with the Throgs."
"Then you did have more than the dreams to back you when you argued withFenniston!" Shann cut in.
Thorvald's eyes were on him again. "When did you hear that, Lantee?"
To his great embarrassment, Shann found himself flushing. "I heard you,the day you left for Headquarters," he admitted, and then added in hisown defense, "Probably half the camp did, too."
Thorvald's gathering frown flickered away. He gave a snort of laughter."Yes, I guess we did rather get to the bellowing point that morning. Thedreams--" he came back to the subject--"Yes, the dreamswere--are--important. We had their warning from the start. Lorry was theFirst-In Scout who charted Warlock, and he is a good man. I guess I canbreak secret now to tell you that his ship was equipped with a newexperimental device which recorded--well, you might call it an"emanation"--a radiation so faint its source could not be traced. And itregistered whenever Lorry had one of those dreams. Unfortunately, themachine was very new, very much in the untested stage, and itsperformance when checked later in the lab was erratic enough so thepowers-that-be questioned all its readings. They produced a half dozenanswers to account for that tape, and Lorry only caught the recording aslong as he was on a big bay to the south.
"Then when two check flights came in later, carrying perfected machinesand getting no recordings, it was all written off as a mistake in thefirst experiment. A planet such as Warlock is too big a find to throwaway when there was no proof of occupancy. And the settlement boysrushed matters right along."
Shann recalled his own vivid dream of the skull-rock set in the lap ofwater--this sea? And another small point fell into place to furnish thebeginning of a pattern. "I was asleep on the raft when I dreamed aboutthat skullmountain," he said slowly, wondering if he were making sense.
Thorvald's head came up with the alert stance of Taggi on a strong gamescent.
"Yes, on the raft you dreamed of a skull-rock. And I of a cavern with agreen veil. Both of us were on water--water which had an eventualconnection with the sea. Could water be a conductor? I wonder...." Onceagain his hand went into his blouse. He crossed the strip of gravelbeach and dipped fingers into the water, letting the drops fall on thecarved disk he now held in his other hand.
"What are you doing?" Shann could see no purpose in that.
Thorvald did not answer. He had pressed wet hand to dry now, palm topalm, the coin cupped tightly between them. He turned a quarter circle,to face the still distant open sea.
"That way." He spoke with a new odd tonelessness.
Shann stared into the other's face. All the eager alertness of only amoment earlier had been wiped away. Thorvald was no longer the man hehad known, but in some frightening way a husk, holding a quite differentpersonality. The younger Terran answered his fear with an attack fromthe old days of rough in-fighting in the Dumps of Tyr. He brought hisright hand down hard in a sharp chop across the officer's wrists. Thebone coin spun to the sand and Thorvald stumbled, staggering forward astep or two. Before he could recover balance Shann had stamped on themedallion.
Thorvald whirled, his stunner drawn with a speed for which Shann gavehim high marks. But the younger man's own weapon was already out andready. And he talked--fast.
"That thing's dangerous! What did you do--what did it do to you?"
His demand got through to a Thorvald who was himself again.
"What was _I_ doing?" came a counter demand.
"You were acting like a mind-contr
olled."
Thorvald stared at him incredulously, then with a growing spark ofinterest.
"The minute you dripped water on that thing you changed," Shanncontinued.
Thorvald reholstered his stunner. "Yes," he mused, "why _did_ I want todrip water on it? Something prompted me ..." He ran his still damp handup the angle of his jaw, across his forehead as if to relieve some painthere. "What else did I do?"
"Faced to the sea and said 'that way,'" Shann replied promptly.
"And why did you move in to stop me?"
Shann shrugged. "When I first touched that thing I felt a shock. AndI've seen mind-controlled----" He could have bitten his tongue forbetraying that. The world of the mind-controlled was very far from thelife Thorvald and his kind knew.
"Very interesting," commented the other. "For one of so few years youseem to have seen a lot, Lantee--and apparently remembered most of it.But I would agree that you are right about this little plaything; itcarries a danger with it, being far less innocent than it looks." Hetore off one of the fluttering scraps of rag which now made up hissleeve. "If you'll just remove your foot, we'll put it out of businessfor now."
He proceeded to wrap the disk well in his bit of cloth, taking care notto touch it again with his bare fingers while he stowed it away.
"I don't know what we have in this--a key to unlock a door, a trap tocatch the unwary. I can't guess how or why it works. But we can bereasonably sure it's not just some carefree maiden's locket, nor theequivalent of a credit to spend in the nearest bar. So it pointed me tothe sea, did it? Well, that much I am willing to allow. Maybe we'll beable to return it to the owner, _after_ we learn who--or what--thatowner is."
Shann gazed down at the green water, opaque, not to be pierced to thedepths by human sight. Anything might lurk there. Suddenly the Throgsbecame normal when balanced against an unknown living in the murkydepths of an aquatic world. Another attack on the Throg-held camp couldbe well preferred to such exploration as Thorvald had in mind. Yet Shanndid not voice any protest as the Survey officer faced again in the samedirection as the disk had pointed him moments before.