by L. P. Davies
“So far, so good.” Lee was still out of breath. He slapped one of the stumpy grey trunks with mock affection. “They have some use, after all. I wonder if they bear fruit.” One of the huge glossy leaves swung against his face and he pushed it out of the way. “Something in the nature of coconuts, I would say. By the leaves, anyway …”
He had regained his breath but lost his smile. He puckered his forehead.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“It just struck me … Talking of coconuts, thinking they’d be useful to flavour that porridge that they served up. When the woman brought the food in, I thanked her—automatically, you know. And that was when she smiled as if she guessed what I was saying, pointed to the bowls and said something in her own lingo. You know what? I think maybe she was telling me that they were only the first course, that there was more to come. The sweet, the pudding.”
“Which means it won’t be long before they find what’s happened,” I said with some bitterness. “A pity you didn’t think of that before.”
“I can’t think of everything,” he retorted resentfully. “We’re only wasting time talking.”
It was hard work forcing a way through the trees. The leaves, sprouting at face level, were the biggest nuisance. As before, it meant we had to move in a perpetual stoop. It was a relief to straighten when we emerged at the far side. In front the ground rose gently towards the rocky hills. We were exposed for the few moments it took us to reach a mound of jagged-edged red rock.
“I was thinking—” Lee started.
“Let’s get further away first.” I looked anxiously back at the village.
“There’s a good chance Uncle John is in one of those houses.”
“It’s possible,” I agreed.
He fingered his lip. “We managed to get away easily enough.”
I saw then what he was driving at. “It wasn’t all. that easy.”
“Granted, Uncle John is an old man. But Adam isn’t. He could have done it.”
“Perhaps they have escaped.”
“Not through the roof, otherwise precautions would have been taken against the same thing happening again. I can’t believe these people are that simple.”
And that led to the idea that had taken root in my mind when we had been breaking out.
“The house could have been a temporary measure. They might be in some place that’s more solid.”
“Stone walls do a prison make. So long as the roof is of the same material. On the other hand, they might not be down there at all. But there’s no point in moving on until we’ve made sure.”
“We can’t make sure in broad daylight,” I said. “The best thing we can do is find some sort of hiding place in these hills—a cave, perhaps. Somewhere not too far away from the village and the stream. Then when darkness comes we can make a reconnaissance,”
We left our cover, crossed an open slope, reached another pile of rock, waded through the stream that had been responsible for our capture, paused for another quick drink, and drinking, looked back.
Lee could have been right: there could have been a second course to the meal. Or maybe the woman had come back for the empty bowls. Whichever it was, our absence had been discovered and no time was wasted in launching a pursuit. A file of fur-clad men was emerging from the palms to fan out into a line before starting to climb the slopes. Some of them were armed with the familiar bamboo tubes. Others carried what could have been a larger version of the same weapon. They moved quickly, calling to each other as they climbed. Their voices, even from the distance, sounded angry. I had the feeling that this time they really meant business, that if they captured us again there would be nothing gentle about their handling of us.
CHAPTER SEVEN
That our pursuers had already spotted us was only too obvious from the way the line of men changed direction. They moved directly towards us as they climbed, their shouting more urgent. I guessed it was our shirts, filthy though they were, that must have given us away.
“Make for the cleft!” I gasped as we stumbled hurriedly along.
I thought we would have no trouble in finding the entrance to the narrow cleft along which the hunter had unwittingly led us to his village. It had been quite close to the stream. But the rock face was deeply indented, broken with jagged outcroppings, the many fissures deeply shadowed so that it was impossible to distinguish dead-end indentations from the cleft.
The going was getting harder. With no path to follow it was a question of struggling along the steep slope, making what use we could of the few handholds. Lee slipped and slid down a patch of loose scree. Precious moments were lost while I helped him scramble back up. A quick glance back showed that the gap between ourselves and the brown-faced pursuers had narrowed considerably. More sure-footed than we, more accustomed to the rough terrain, they were closing in on us fast.
And it was obvious now that we had missed the cleft. Panic came with that realisation. I fought it as I staggered on, telling myself that there had to be another way of getting through the towering rock face. My ankle caught in the trap of two flat boulders. More time was lost as Lee helped me free myself. We came to a narrow plateau covered with the small pieces of rock of some long-ago avalanche. There Lee stopped suddenly, one hand clamped to his side.
“Stitch—” he gasped. “Give me a second …”
My panic grew despite my efforts to control it. Staggering to the red-rock wall, I leaned against it, my heart pounding in my chest. Stooping to massage my bruised ankle, I looked back. The line had split. Now three men were coming up behind us, on the same level but still some distance away. Three more were moving immediately below, keeping parallel with us. The remainder were out of sight, hidden by a projection of the slope.
Lee, taking long deep breaths, swore, something I had never heard him do before. He took a few steps and had to stop. “No use.” He looked about him. “If there was some way of stopping them, even delaying them .. . Stones?”
“No use,” I jerked out. I had already thought of that. And the possible consequences.
He straightened, took another deep breath. “That’s better.”
I started off, but he had stooped to pick up a small boulder.
“No, Lee!” I cried sharply. “They’ve got weapons. They’ll retaliate.”
“Popguns,” he grunted, weighing the stone in his hands.
“We don’t know what they can do with them. And they’ve got another sort of weapon too.”
The fur-clad men had been closing in while we were talking. I went to grip Lee’s shoulder, swung him round angrily, knocked the stone out of his hands, even pushed him along. For a moment I thought he was going to hit me. Instead he set off across the plateau. At the end the slope steepened suddenly, affording no footholds at all.
Panic exploded sickeningly inside me again. My face streaming with sweat, I looked about, desperately searching for some means of escape from the trap into which we had stumbled. Immediately above us was another ledge, one that appeared to extend for quite a distance. By standing on my toes I could just get my fingers over the edge. Lee, without a word being spoken, used his shoulder to boost me up. I clawed my way, oblivious of a split knuckle and a broken fingernail, to the new level. Kneeling, I reached down to help him. He gripped my hand with one of his and used the other to grasp what seemed a solidly anchored projection.
But it was loose, shifted with his weight, rocked and then slipped away, leaving all of Lee’s weight swinging on my arm. With an effort I managed to haul him up. We collapsed together on the ground. And the dislodged boulder went rolling and bouncing away down the slope, collecting smaller stones on its way, the miniature avalanche hurtling towards the trio of men below. Shouting, they scattered,, but not in time. A flying rock caught one of them on the shoulder, sending him sprawling.
Lee, scrambling to his knees, showed white teeth in a mirthless grin. “That’s what I had in mind before.”
Stupid though it was at such a t
ime, I still tried to offer some sort of apology.
“Down there—I’m sorry for what happened, Lee.”
“No.” He punched my shoulder lightly. “Save your breath. You were right. It’s just that I wanted to hit back at them. Now I have….”
There was a temporary halt to the pursuit. Lee’s unintentional victim was sitting up, one hand to his shoulder, his two companions bending anxiously over him. The three that had been following us on the same level had stopped in their tracks. And down below, the remainder of the party had emerged into view, coming to cluster about the injured man. From their attitude as they looked up at us, some of them pointing, I got the impression that they thought the avalanche had been intentional. And that, I felt sure, would bring retaliation. I was right.
Still crouching on my knees, getting my strength back to move off again, I threw another quick glance sideways. It was fortunate I did. One of the bamboo weapons was raised and pointed in our direction. I dragged Lee down just in time. Silver flashed low over our beads, and something struck the rock behind and tinkled to the ground—so close that Lee was able to reach to pick up the dart, holding it gingerly for our inspection. And with the pursuit halted, there was time for that
At first sight the dart looked far from dangerous, being nothing more than a splinter of wood about the size of a matchstick with a sliver of glass fixed to one end. At the worst it could only have penetrated flesh by about half an inch. But there was more to the tiny projectile than that. Smeared on the glass .tip was a sticky, dark-brown substance.
“Curare,” Lee said woodenly. “Or the equivalent. So now we know.” He tossed the dart away. I dropped to my stomach, wriggled towards a large chunk of rock and raised my head carefully. Silver flashed by my face and another dart pinged harmlessly on the wall behind.
“We’ll be all right as long as we keep our heads down,” Lee said.
Which was true enough. And there was any amount of cover on our ledge. A stalemate seemed to exist. We were pinned down, and the pursuers, seemingly wary of more avalanches, had come to a halt. But they had all the advantages. With the sun burning down on our backs, we would soon be suffering the discomfort of thirst and would have to make a run for it. The ledge to the left seemed to offer a possible escape. I peered between two rocks at the men below. The injured man had been helped to his feet, but his arm hung loosely at his side. I wondered absently how they coped with sickness and injury in this dimension. It would certainly be very rough and ready.
Two of the men had moved away from the group and were engaged in some new activity. One was kneeling, holding across his bent elbows one of the larger, thicker bamboo tubes that I had earlier assumed to be a king-size version of the dart-weapon. His companion had produced a small skin bag, from which he was taking a variety of small objects that glistened brightly, catching and reflecting the sun-sight. It was clear the two were assembling some kind of apparatus.
“What do you make of it?” Lee asked at my side.
I tried to disguise the fear in my voice. “I think we’ll soon find out.” I wondered if we ought to make a dash for it now. Two darts in quick succession, the moment I lifted my head a fraction, removed any hope.
The end of the wooden tube pointed in our direction like the muzzle of a gun. The stooping man fixed what was certainly a circular glass disc over the end of the threatening muzzle and then turned his attention to the other end of the tube, his back hiding what his hands were doing. As I watched with growing apprehension, the glass circle suddenly sprang into radiance as if a light had been switched on inside the tube. It increased in brilliance, becoming a flaring blue-white. And then the light seemed to elongate, projecting from the muzzle, moving slowly—a dazzling beam of light with a coiling rose-pink core. It came towards us, curving for all the world like an unbroken stream of tracer bullets, impinging on the rock a short distance below where we lay. And where it struck, rock glowed redly, hissing and bubbling like molten lava.
Reason lost in the face of this new, terrifying threat, I wriggled away from the verge of the ledge. Crouching to my feet, I turned, still bent double, to race as fast as I could along the ledge, only vaguely aware of a shape at my side that was Lee also running for his life.
A flash of light inches from my face was a dart, spending itself harmlessly against the rock. Others would be speeding towards us. But I had temporarily lost fear of them in the face of this new, terrifying weapon. All I knew was that I had to get as far away from that burning ray as possible.
From the side of my eye, as we ran along the ledge, I saw the beam sweeping across the rock face behind, leaving a trail of glowing, steaming lava in its wake. A clump of bushes burst into instant flame. Another dart sped by my face; something plucked at the sleeve of my shirt. The ledge had started to rise, slowing our stumbling progress. I slipped and almost fell. The bottom dropped out of my stomach as my feet slid beneath me. Recovering, I saw Lee a few paces ahead.
He hesitated, then vanished out of sight in a flurry of loose stones. For a moment I thought he had fallen from the ledge. But then in my turn I reached the end of the ledge to find a sudden dip that swung at the base to disappear into a narrow ravine.
I slithered down on my back in a cascade of rubble (as Lee must have done) to join him where he was picking himself up at the bottom. He helped me to my feet. Then we were racing along the ravine, skidding together round a corner. Reaching the end, we plunged into an unexpected but very welcome thicket of palms, thrusting the heavy leaves aside as we weaved our way between the thick grey trunks.
Emerging at the other side, we came to a gasping halt and turned to look back. We could see over the tops of the trees to the break in the hill-line that marked the ravine. There was no sign yet of pursuit. I wondered, drenched in sweat, my chest heaving painfully, reason returning, if they would have to dismantle their ray-weapon before following.
Still breathless, I was ready to move again. But not Lee. His hand was clamped to his side again.
“No,” he shook his head. “It’ll pass. Hell, it’s like a knife jabbing.” He was able to walk, but only slowly. There was nothing I could do to help apart from putting my arm about his waist, and that he objected to, shaking me away. But his teeth showed in a grin. “If I’d known what waited for me in this blasted place I’d have gone into training. I’ll do better on my own, Gerald.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Bloodhounds not in sight yet. That dry waterfall was a lucky break.” He turned off his smile. “What price that damned heat-ray?”
We were making our way slowly over a level tract of ground. “I didn’t think much about it,” I said.
“Stone huts and fur jackets …” He paused for a moment and then stumbled on. “Glass plumbing and poison darts. And now a ray that by the way it churned up rock should be capable of burning through the thickest armour plating we have way back on earth. A hollow tree trunk, a few pieces of glass, and it turns out something like that. It just doesn’t make sense. What kind of people are they?”
“God knows,” I said.
“A damn crazy mixture of primitive and sophisticate.” Taking his hand from his side, Lee said, “That’s better,” and looked back. I did too. A figure had topped the crest, silhouetted in the gap. Others followed.
Able to move quickly again, we finished crossing the open space and came upon more trees. One of the small furry animals squeaked alarm across our path, running with its belly close to the ground.
Out of the trees again and another open space to be crossed. But this one was encircled with a wall of rock, a wall that at the first, heart-sinking glance seemed unbroken, with no way over it or round it. But Lee, back in the lead again, found and made towards the narrow opening that had been hidden by a grotesque projection. Close on his heels I followed him into the welcome shade of towering walls. The floor was even, the going easy. Yet despite the pace we were keeping, the pursuit seemed to move even faster. We could hear voices shouting behind us.
The narr
ow passage opened up with dramatic suddenness to reveal an enclosed nightmare valley of desolate broken rock. On either side needles and pinnacles towered into the sky. Facing us, completely blocking the way, reaching from side to side, stretching up into the reddish haze of the sky, was a curtain of green-tinged mist.
We drew up sharply, aghast at the sight. I looked back. Nothing there except for the cleft we had just emerged from. It was the only way into the trap, the only way out. And voices echoed from it. Instinctively we moved away from the sound, towards the motionless mist.
“Between the devil and the deep blue sea,” Lee said. “Do we risk that again”—he looked at the curtain—“or do we wait for our friends back there?”