by John Blaine
Rick answered for all of them. “If we knew that . . .” He stopped. “But we’ve said that before. Anyway, we know now that Van Groot is behind it.Van Groot and Conway, if there’s any difference.”
“But Van Groot’s route should take us to the Tengi-Bu Plateau,” Zircon mused.
“Are you sure of that, sir?” Rick asked. “He might have been sending us into a dead end of some kind.”
There is that possibility,” Zircon admitted, “but somehow, in spite of the evidence, I doubt it.”
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“We’ve only the word of this little boy for it,” Weiss added.
Chahda corrected him politely.“Soon maybe sixteen years, Sahib Weiss.”
The professor smiled.“Sorry, Chahda. I’d forgotten you were almost grown up. Well, anyway, let’s hear the rest of your story.”
Chahda accepted a fresh cup of tea from one of the bearers.“Is most short. On next train toNepal is English Sahib. So much money! Many peoples work for him. I make believe I am Number Three boy, and I ride on train toNepal .So easy. But when is comeNepal , is no more trains.”
AtNepal , Chahda had acquired the long, white, padded coat he wore, just how he didn’t explain.
Probably “borrowed,” Rick thought. Then, with the few rupees left from the money Zircon had given him to buy clothes, he had bought bricks of tea, a tin can for heating the tea, and a kind of compressed wheat. Rice had completed his meager rations, and he had found water wherever he could.
Then he had started out after the caravan, hiking as fast as possible, trying to catch up, and sleeping at night wrapped in his padded coat.
“We owe a lot to this little guy,” Rick thought. “Coming after us like that, on short rations, almost freezing at night . . . that’s loyalty!”
The Hindu boy continued, groaning realistically. “All time walks. Is sorethe foots . Soon I see the Sahibs, but I must goslow , because peoples is watching.”
The party exchanged glances. The watchers Scotty had seen.
“Did you get a look at these people, Chahda?” Zircon asked.
“Yes, Sahib Zircon. Once I hide in rocks and one is go by close, and I am almosttouch . He is like China- mens, but not same. He is small, like me, and he is shave the head, and is wear clothes with pads.
He ishave plates on chest made from . . . from . . . what is called skins from animals, please?”
“Leather?”Rick asked.
“Is so,” Chahda assented. “Is also carry a ... a ...” He made motions with his hands.
Light dawned. “A bow and arrowl ” Rick exclaimed.
Chahda nodded.
Weiss ticked off the points on his fingers.“Small, like a Chinese but not precisely, shaven head, padded clothing, leather armor, and a bow and arrow.Hobart , what does that mean to you?”
“Mongol.”
“Exactly.But it’s quite impossible. A Mongol such as Chahda describes would have lived five or six centuries
ago.”
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“But he saw one,” Rick said.
“So he said. And I doubt that he could have made up such a tale. I’m afraid that we have another mystery on our hands,” Weiss sighed.
Rick grinned at Chahda.“Anything else?”
“One small thing.I forget to say this. Before I am taking train, I go back to the Sikh Sahib. He is help.
We go to the Geo . . . what you said before.”
He reached into his capacious padded garment. “We get these.”
He drew out a thick sheaf of corrected maps.
CHAPTER XIII
Dead End
Zircon looked from the old maps to the new. “I don’t know what to say,” he sighed. “From what Chahda has told us, it would be wiser to take this new course.”
Weiss spoke up. “I think the evidence is no longer circumstantial,Hobart . Van Groot changed themaps, We should take the new trail.”
Rick and Scotty nodded assent.
Zircon rose and said, “Well, if it’s agreed that we’re going to change our course, I’d better inform Sahmeed .” He walked over to where the bearers were just finishing breakfast.
The boys started breaking camp, rolling up their sleeping bags and those of the scientists. Then Rick noticed a disturbance among the bearers. “Now what’s wrong?” he asked.
Zircon and Sahmeed were face to face, and the giant guide was waving his arms furiously. It was evident he did not agree with the decision to change the course.
“We’d better lend a hand,” Scotty said.
“This beggar is being difficult,” Zircon told them when they came up to him.
Sahmeedwaved a hamlike hand in the new direction. “Bad! Much bad! No go.”
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Weiss pointed to the trail they had been following. “Wherethis trail go?”
“Go Tengi-Bu,” Sahmeed declared.
Weiss pointedsouth, in the direction of the path they were to take. “Where go?”
Sahmeedshrugged.
“I don’t think he knows,” the little professor said flatly. “I doubt that he has ever been to Tengi-Bu.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t insist on taking what is obviously the wrong way. No wonder the trail was so rough!”
“This is the last straw,” Zircon bellowed. “Do you mean to say you think this beggar lied just to get the job?”
“Maybe he was planted,” Rick suggested.
Zircon thought about it. “I don’t see how he could have been,” he replied. “We picked him ourselves.”
“Did we?” Weiss demanded. “Could we very well have chosen anyone else, the way he dominated that crowd?”
Sahmeedhad been staring impassively, his arms folded.
Zircon faced him. “Well, whoever he has been working for,” he said grimly, “he’s going our way now.”
He pointed in the direction of the new course.
“We go, Sahmeed .”
Sahmeeddidn’t move. He spoke a guttural order. As one man, the bearers sat down. They were refusing to go on!
“We’re moving,” Zircon said. He took the lead line of the first yak. Rick jumped to help, and they began lashing the animals together, head to tail.
Sahmeed’scomposure broke. He stepped forward and snarled something in his own tongue. The bearers got to their feet.
Zircon smiled. “I didn’t think they’d sit quietly if we started to take the animals and all their food.”
Sahmeedwas bent slightly, his big fists clenched. His face was hard and his eyes glittered.
“Look at him!” Rick whispered. “He won’t let us move!”
Zircon whirled to face the big man, and the jacket on the professor’s broad shoulders bunched as he lifted his arms.
“No, Hobart!” Weiss said hoarsely.
Then Scotty walked up. He had gone back to the rear of the caravan while they were talking and now held his rifle carelessly in one hand.
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At sight of the weapon, Sahmeed’s face changed.
Scotty held out a ration tin to Rick. “Put a rock in it and throw it,” he invited.
Rick stooped and picking up a stone, dropped it into the can to give it weight. Then, making sure that all eyes were on him, he threw it with all his strength, far up and out.
Scotty watched with seeming idleness as the canarched into the air. Then, miraculously, the rifle was at his shoulder.
It barked once. The can stopped in its downward plunge and jerked upward. The rifle spoke again. The can jerked once more.
Scotty lowered the rifle and the can fell down the slope.
The muzzle was pointing in the general direction of Sahmeed . “We go, Sahmeed ,” Scotty ordered.
There was no doubt in his tone.
The guide turned slowly and spoke to the bearers. In a moment, they swung off on the new trail.
Rick took a deep breath. “Nice going,” he said hoarsely.
Weiss patted Scotty’s shoulder silently.
“Now we kno
w the language that brute understands,” Zircon said. He walked to the head of the caravan, map in hand.
Chahda, who had not said a word during the entire scene, grinned now and sighed in relief. “Now Sahmeed know who is boss,” he exulted.
“But he doesn’t like it,” Rick observed.
“We watch Sahmeed close,” the Hindu boy advised.
Scotty slipped the safety catch on the rifle and smiled. “I’ll be right behind him, from now on.”
The caravan traveled southward, with Zircon and Weiss watching the map and Sahmeed closely. They were off the trail for long hours until they picked up a wider path that coincided with a secondary route on the new map. Within a day they should reach the well-defined route the Geographical Union had specified.
When they camped for the night, the four white men took turns on guard, Scotty’s rifle in their hands.
But there was not so much as a word from Sahmeed that night nor in the days that followed.
They were twelve thousand feet up now! Chahda was the first to notice the drowsiness that made everyone feel as though they were sleepwalking. The air seemed thin as gossamer to their straining lungs.
Their minds couldn’t seem to take hold of ideas or conversation and their tongues stumbled on words.
Weiss suffered most, and they were forced to call many rest periods on his account.
“Oxygen starvation,” Zircon told them. “I told you it would be fierce up here.”
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As the sun started to dip into a cleft in the mountains, one evening, Rick realized that they had traveled less than three miles the entire day.
“Pilots wear oxygen masks at this height,” Scotty said. “Where are ours?”
Rick grinned. “You’llbe wanting piggyback rides next.
“The altitude record is fifty thousand . . . no, sixty thousand feet,” Chahda said vaguely. They laughed at the boy’s remark. It was the first time he had ever been in doubt about anything from his “ Alm-in-ack.”
“Well have to give you artificial respiration pretty soon,” Scotty teased the Hindu boy.
Rick plodded on for long minutes before he spoke again. “This weak feeling could be an awful nuisance ifJo- jodecided to get tough.” He pointed ahead to Sahmeed .
“He won’t,” Scotty said. “Not with this behind him,” he added patting the cold metal of his rifle.
When they came to a clearing in the trail, Zircon called back that this was to be their encampment for the night. It was still light, but he had decided that the rock-free area was the best they could hope for.
Besides, all of them were unnaturally tired because of the altitude.
“I wonder how close we are to Tengi-Bu?” Rick asked, as he sank to the ground.
“Just a few more days, according to the map.Well make it by the tenth, all right.”
“Barring accidents,” Rick said.
“Why do we have to go to Tengi-Bu anyway? Why not set up right here?”
Professor Weiss came by in time to hear Scotty’s question. “Isn’t that the same question Barby asked?”
he inquired whimsically. “As a matter of fact, Scotty, doubtless there are locations nearer than Tengi-Bu where we could set up. It just happens that we don’t know any of them.”
“But couldn’t we look for one?” Scotty wanted to know.
“That would be rather unscientific,” Weiss laughed. “Can you imagine an expedition like this starting out Without a definite destination?” He grew serious. “Actually, there are good reasons why we must reach Tengi-Bu. One is that we have precalculated our angles of transmission. Another is that we know from previous research that Tengi-Bu is electrically suited for the experiment. By that, we mean that the ground has little tendency to absorb radio-frequency signals.”
Scotty scratched his head. “That’s nice,” he remarked, bewildered.
Rick and Weiss laughed at his puzzlement. “I don’t know how to explain any less technically,” Weiss said.
“Isn’t it true, sir,” Rick put in, “that we could set up anywhere near Tengi-Bu, if we found a proper location?”
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“Yes,” Weiss agreed, “but why should we search? We know Tengi-Bu will do.” He moved on toward Zircon, who was exploring rations in search of the evening meal.
“This radar business makes my head tired,” Scotty complained, “and the hiking to get there makes my legs tired.”
“Same here,” Rick agreed.
They stretched out flat, too exhausted for the moment even to bother with food.
A snore startled Rick and he sat up. It was Chahda, curled up in the long, white, padded coat he had acquired, and dead to the world.
“It’s going to be no fun standing guard tonight,” Rick said. “I have the third watch.”
They had been rotating the guard, breaking the night into four parts. Tonight, Zircon would take the first hours, then Weiss. Weiss would awaken Rick who would stand watch until it was time to wake Scotty.
“You’ve got the best deal,” Rick continued. “You can sleep in one stretch, and when you get up you won’t have to go back to bed.”
Scotty grinned. “Stop beefing. You’ll get the last trick tomorrow night.”
Rick rose wearily. “We’d better make chow. And wake up Chahda before he freezes to death. It sure is cold up here.”
They found Zircon and Weiss together, staring at a cleft in the mountain that towered overhead.
“I told you we had forgotten something,” Weiss was saying grumpily.“Binoculars . . . one of the most obvious things.”
“It was hard to think of everything,” Zircon replied testily.
“What is it?” Rick asked.
Zircon pointed. “We saw a figure up there. It’s gone now.”
A shiver went through Rick.“The watchers! We haven’t seen them for days.”
“I’ll wager they’ve seen us,” Weiss muttered.
“But who are they?”
“I don’t know,” Zircon answered. “I’ve tried not to worry about it, because they’ve made no move to harm us. I think Sahmeed knows, but he isn’t talking.”
“It gives me the creeps,” Scotty said.
“It is uncomfortable,” Weiss agreed. “I hope they’re nothing but curious Tibetans too shy to come into camp.”
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“That seems likely,” Zircon nodded. “Yet, Chahda described Mongols.Ancient Mongols.”
The sky was fast darkening now. Rick said with false optimism, “The bearers must know we’re being watched and they don’t seem afraid.”
“That’s why I’m not especially worried,” Zircon said. “Well, let’s make supper. I have the first watch, I believe.”
Immediately after supper Rick crawled into his sleeping bag. But it seemed as though he had hardly closed his eyes before Weiss was shaking him.
Near by a mule snorted and a yak stirred restlessly. Rick crawled from his warm bed and pulled on his clothes, shivering in the cold. He took a blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders, then sat Indian fashion and tried to keep his head from nodding.
“Everything is quiet,” the little professor said, as he handed Rick the rifle.
Silence inTibet is like silence nowhere else, Rick thought. His imagination peopled the silence with hostile eyes that stared, watching his every move. He shivered again, not entirely from the cold. Who were the watchers?
A yak stood silhouetted against the sky, a low, strong bulk. Rick kept his eyes on the animal and tried to fight off sleep. The thin air made him drowsier than usual. He found his eyes drooping and he jerked upright, but sitting up straight was too tiring. He rested his head against a rock and felt the chill of it through the blanket.
Suddenly Rick was conscious of a funny buzzing sound in his head and his eyes felt parched. His neck had a crick in it.
Had he been asleep?
Impossible.The yak hadn’t moved. The moon was still in the same place. He pulled back his sleeve to l
ook at his watch. He had left it in his sleeping bag.
A stone rattled and he grabbed for the rifle.
“Fine guard you are,” Scotty greeted him. “I could have stolen the blanket right off you without any trouble.”
“Go back to bed,” Rick said.
“Go to bed yourself,” Scotty answered. “I’ve had sleep enough.Anything doing?”
“Not a thing.” He handed Scotty the rifle and stood up. Around him were the sleeping forms of his friends. More distant were the huddled forms of the bearers, vague shapes in the darkness. The yak he had watched moaned softly.
“Tibetis yours,” he said to Scotty and walked over to his sleeping bag. He inched into it, luxuriating in the warm fleece. The next thing he knew Scotty was shouting.
“Rick! Everybody, wake upl ”
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Scotty!
Rick jerked out of his sleeping bag, wide awake. Dawn was graying the rocks, and Scotty was running through the camp-through an empty camp!
“They’re gone,” he shouted.
Rick saw that the animals were gone. Only the lone yak remained, still staked in the spot where Rick had seen it during his watch-tied there, so they would be fooled into thinking the rest of the animals were there too. The shapes which he had taken to be the sleeping bearers were more rocks!
Sahmeedand the bearers had decamped with all the pack animals except the lone yakl The professors were out of their sleeping bags now, staring incredulously about.
“But how . . .” Weiss began.
“Look at me,” Scotty moaned. “They walked off right under my nose, and I never heard or saw a thing!”
“Wait a minute,” Rick said. “I thought I fell asleep last night, while I was on guard. Now I’m sure of it.
They did all this while Z was on the job”
“Don’t be too sure,” Zircon contradicted gruffly. “It might have happened to any of us. We’ll probably never know. The point is, they’ve gone.’8
“The equipment,” Weiss choked. “They’ve taken our equipment!”
“No, sir,” Scotty said. “They piled it over there, behind those boulders.”
Weiss ran to the equipment and checked it anxiously. “All here,” he announced with relief.
Rick walked over to the remaining yak. It was staked next to a pile of ration cartons. “They took most of the rations,” he said, “but they left us some. We won’t starve for a while.”