by John Blaine
At the mention of the word, the others stopped short, full realization of their plight sinking in.
Suddenly Rick spun around, remembering. “Chahda he exclaimed.
The Hindu boy was gone, too.
“If they’ve hurt that boy . . .” Zircon began.
“No signs of a struggle,” Rick interrupted, “and we didn’t hear anything. He must have gone voluntarily.”
“If I ever get that big hulk of a Sahmeed in my sights,” Scotty said grimly, “I’ll blow him loose from his mustache!”
Zircon unfolded his maps and laid them on the ground. The others bent over them. “We’d better have a council of war,” he said.
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There were no villages within easy range, but beyond the Tengi-Bu Plateau there was a small settlement.
“How far?”Rick asked.
Zircon estimated. “Perhaps two weeks.Depends on the trails.’
Rick swallowed. “Two weeks there and two weeks back . . .”
“That means the end of the experiment,” Scotty said.
“No,’ Julius Weiss exclaimed. “We can’t let this stop us!”
“Let us be realistic,” Zircon said. “Consider, Julius. Heaven knows I don’t like the idea any more than you do. But our principal goal now must be to save our own lives.”
“Why couldn’t we set up the equipment right here and send a message?” Scotty asked.
“They won’t be listening for us until the tenth,” Rick reminded him.
“What’s more,” Zircon added, “we could never transmit from here.” The sweep of his arm indicated the high mountains close overhead. “We are in a pocket.
Attenuation would absorb our signal, and the mountains would blanket what little did get out.”
Scotty looked blank so Rick explained. “Attenuation means that the ground would absorb the signal.
That’s why we have to get to Tengi-Bu. It’s high enough so there’s no chance of interference.”
“Or somewhere similar,” Zircon added. “Any moun-taintop would do, but most of these we couldn’t climb ourselves, much less carry equipment.”
Julius Weiss had been standing quietly, lost in thought. Now he spoke, his kindly face strained. “Hobartis right, boys. Our first thought must be of ourselves. The experiment must wait.”
Rick knew what that announcement had cost the little scientist. Has Weiss been alone, he would have stayed with the equipment no matter what the cost. But he felt a responsibility to the others.
The boy tried to reassure him. “It isn’t givingIt up entirely, sir. We can get bearers and supplies and come back. Dad will keep trying for weeks if we don’t answer on the tenth.”
Zircon spoke decisively. “We will start for this village at once. Each of us will make a pack of blankets and rations. The rest of the rations will go on the yak.”
“Will it be safe to leave the equipment?” Scotty asked.
“We must leave it,” Weiss said sadly, “and pray that it will be unharmed when we return.”
“If it is,” Zircon added, “I will devote the rest of my life to finding Sahmeed .And Van Groot.”
It was the calm tone of his voice that made Rickstare . It left no doubt that the big scientist would do just that.
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As they lifted the improvised packs to their backs, Rick saw Weiss looking at the equipment, his eyes misty. Then the little scientist fell in step behind Zircon, who was leading the yak. For two years the scientists had dreamed of this project. Now July tenth was almost here and they wouldn’t be set up to send the Spindrift message.
As they plodded along, Rick kept thinking of the Hindu boy. “They must have kidnapped Chahda,” he said to Scotty.
“I don’t think so,” Scotty objected. “I think he went voluntarily.”
“But why?”
“Maybe he saw what the end of this would be, and figured he would pretend to play along until the bearers reachedNepal . That way, he could organize a rescue party and come back for us.”
“That must be it,” Rick agreed. “I hope Sahmeed doesn’t get wise.”
“When he gets in a tight spot hell probably look in his * Worrold Alm-in-ack’ and talk them out of it,”
Scotty said.
Rick’s thoughts returned to their own problems. Zircon had said that the village on the map was at least two weeks away. He hoped grimly that the food would hold out. His head was down and he almost bumped into Scotty ahead of him as the tiny procession came to a sudden halt. He looked up and stared straight into a wall of rock that blocked their path.
“Dead end,” Zircon said hollowly.
It seemed that the fates were spacing their misfortunes with diabolical timing. There was no way around the wall of rock.
“Are you sure we made the right turn back yonder?” Weiss asked.
Zircon consulted the map. “So far as I can see, we’re on the right trail.”
Rick bent back as far as he could and looked at the steep walls hemming them in. Suddenly he pointed.
“There’s a path leading up the side of that wall,” he said.
The scientists examined the mark in the rock which Rick had optimistically called a “path.” Zircon shook his head. “I, for one, could never climb that,” he declared.
“And I wouldn’t try,” Weiss added.
“Maybe I could climb it and take a look around,” Rick suggested. “I might see a way out.”
Weiss looked again at the precipitous climb. “It’s too dangerous, Rick.”
“Illbeall right,” Rick assured him. Before the scientists could stop him, he had slipped off his pack and trotted toward the base of the cliff. Grabbing on to a jutting rock, he hauled himself up. Hazardous as the ascent had seemed from the ground, it proved to be even more treacherous when Rick found himself climbing. He tested each foothold before resting his weight on the treacherous shale. There was almost Page 69
no incline to the rock wall and one slip would be his last. He reached a shelf, turned and looked down.
The view brought a sick feeling into the pit of his stomach, and he decided not to look down again until he had reached the top.
Inch by inch, he wormed his way up the face of the cliff. It took a full twenty minutes to complete the dangerous climb, but at last he hauled himself to the very top and stood on the small square of summit.
He leaned over and looked down, waving to the party below.
“Okay,” he shouted and the words echoed back from the mountains.
“How does it look?” he heard Scotty call. That was good. They could talk to each other because of the acoustics of the rock walls. He saw instantly why they had come to a dead end in their supposedly correct route.
A trail of broken rock twisted down the mountain and ended in a doorlike piece of rock on the trail.
There had been a landslide and the huge rock had fallen directly across the trail.
Because of his angle of observation, Scotty, Zircon, and Weiss were out of view and he leaned outward slightly to call to them. As he leaned over, his foot slipped forward and broken shale started to clatter down the cliff wall. It was a mere trickle at first, but as the weight of the shower rained against the cliff wall.
Rick felt a rumble and saw to his horror that his slip had dislodged a great slab. It broke off, bounced out from the wall and plummeted straight toward the spot where his friends were standing.
“Look out!” he shouted.
For a moment he didn’t dare look down or call to them. Then he heard Scotty’s voice. “Halloo-o-o . . .
Rick,are you all right?”
He turned cautiously and looked straight down.
All three figures were looking up at him. He let out his breath with a relieved whoosh.
“Yes, I’m okay,” he yelled back. “I’ll take a look.” He could see clearly the country around him and the other side of the cliff. It was much less precipitous on the far side, and as he looked down, Rick saw another trail hugg
ing the cliff on that side. He followed it with his eyes. Far, far down its course, he could see that it joined with the path upon which his friends now stood. In the other direction it seemed to lead straight south, the way they wanted to go. If the three men retraced their steps, they could pick up this path, he decided. It would be a simple matter of following the new one from there on. He measured the distance with his eye and judged by the length of the narrow path that it would take them some time, perhaps two hours, to reach that junction far below.
He waved to them and prepared to descend along the path he had climbed. But he saw at a glance that the sliding shale had sheared away the path. Descending it now would be plain suicide.
He shouted his predicament to the figures below and gave them directions for finding the new path.
“Ill climb down the other side and meet you at the big red boulder down there,” he informed them. “It’s shaped like a beehive. You can’t miss it.”
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They waved and started down the path, and Rick watched them disappear.
Then he started to descend.
CHAPTER XIV
Strange Warriors
Rick’s look at the side of the cliff had been deceptive. The descent wasn’t as easy as he had expected.
The rock was jagged and cut his hands as he edged his way toward the path far below.
He was forced to make detours of as much as a quarter mile in order to lower himself a few feet. At one point he came to a stretch of the cliff that was glassy smooth. There seemed no way around it, but again he detoured and made a few feet more progress.
He looked at his hands and winced at the cuts in the palms, but he couldn’t rest now. He saw that the sun was rushing toward the western horizon and he certainly didn’t want to be caught on the face of the cliff at night.
The way looked easier for a short stretch and he was making fast progress for a time. Then he lowered himself to a wide shelf jutting from the cliff, and as he did, the rock he had used as a brace broke off in his hand. There was no danger of his falling off the shelf, but when he looked up, he realized that he couldn’t retrace his steps. And the shelf stuck too far out to enable him to lower himself from it.
He was trapped!
He searched the wall frantically for some way out of his predicament. Above him, it was smooth. Not a finger of rock existed for him to grasp, to retrace his steps.
The shelf was strewn with rocks of all sizes, relics of the hundreds of landslides that had occurred in these mountains. Toward the end of the shelf was a big boulder. Rick grasped it and leaned far out. The wall beneath it was steep, but there were lots of rocks sticking out. If only there were some way to lower himself to one of those rocks, He couldn’t grasp the edge and drop. It was too crumbly. He fingered his belt and a plan formed in his mind-if he dared try it. But he had to!
His fingers shook as he unbuckled the belt. Then he took another look below and his heart sank. Even if he could moor the belt to something, it was still not long enough for him to reach safety, below. If only he could lengthen it! He stripped the light windbreaker from his back. He looked at the seams of the arms, tugged hard at them and then yanked with all his strength. The seams held.
Thanking his lucky stars, he tied the ends of the sleeves together. He looped the belt around the knot in the sleeves and had a continuous length of doublfv sleeve and belt.
If only the boulder were heavy enough, Rick prayed. He pushed at it and though it teetered slightly, he could not move it. The boulder would serve.
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He draped the body of the jacket around the boulder as he would around the shoulders of a chair. Then he pulled on the belt and the arms stuck straight out from the boulder. If only the arms were long enough to give him the extra foot or two he needed!
Looking down from the shelf, he gulped, tested the improvised lowering rope and slid toward the edge.
At the first jerk of his weight upon the odd arrangement, the rock teetered and terror shook Rick. But it teetered only an inch or two, and held.
The belt was smooth, and he was glad he had wrapped it around his hand. Inch by inch, he lowered himself toward the outjutting rocks beneath the shelf. His toe plucked out at one of them. He was almost at the end of his life line now. And as he hung there, ready to let out the last few inches of the belt, he realized that he would never have the strength to pull himself back up again.
It was now or never.
The end of the belt was reached, and he saw that he could not quite touch the rock toward which he had been aiming. He didn’t dare drop the last few inches, for he knew he could never hold his balance on that miserably small rung of rock.
His palms were perspiring, and his head was just below the edge of the shelf. Then he spied another rock, jutting out slightly beyond the one below him. It was about table-top size, and it would need a swing to get to it, but he had to try.
He started his body swaying like a pendulum, in toward the wall. It was taking the last ounce of strength from him and he knew he couldn’t hold on much longer. With a last, convulsive jerk, he swung free.
His feet landed squarely on the rock.
He grabbed for the wall with feet, knees, fingernails . . . then he collapsed against its face.
For a full minute Rick lay there, breathing heavily. Then he looked straight down at what had lain in store for him had he slipped. His friends would never have recognized him after those razor edge rocks had finished catching him on the way down ... if they had ever found him.
He looked at his wrist watch and realized with a shock that four hours had elapsed since he had started to descend from the top of the cliff. It looked like another three to the ground.
As he dropped to the path and looked up at the course he had followed it seemed incredible that he had made it, but there he was, safe and sound. The red rendezvous rock agreed upon was off to his left, and he headed in that direction.
Distances were deceptive, he soon discovered. From the top of the cliff the red boulder had not seemed terribly far away, but as the minutes ticked off and he did not come to it, he began to get panicky. He felt terribly alone and once stopped and yelled at the top of his lungs.
The echoes laughed back at him.
He tried calling his friends’ names.
There was no answer.
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No reason why there should be, he told himself. They were probably still looking for this path. What if they didn’t find it? What if they got lost? What if he never saw them again?
He tried not to think of the answers, and hurried on as fast as the narrow pathway would permit. He looked down at the drop that fell away below him. He had forgotten what level ground was like. He would walk with a lean to the left for the rest of his days, he decided.
And then he heard a sound.
It was not mortal, he told himself. Probably an echo, but he stopped to listen. There it was again, and it was mortal.
A laughlBut a strange laugh. Not Scotty’s. And certainly no laugh like that had ever come from Weiss or Zircon. It was low and throaty, and if a laugh could be cruel, this one was cruel.
He was so startled that he couldn’t tell from which direction the sound had come and he started running one way and then stopped and headed the other way, in panic.
Why should he be frightened? Rick asked himself. If anyone were near, he wanted to see him, to ask his aid.
But some instinct raised the hair at the nape of his neck and he knew he must dodge this voice at all costs.
He looked wildly about, searching for a hiding place. Far ahead, he saw a hole in the wall, about six feet up.
But what if the voice were coming from that direction?
He had to chance it and he ran.
The voice was coming from this direction, and now he heard more than one I He heard them coming closer and he knew that only a miracle would keep him from being seen. They were just around the curve that shielded him from them.
/> His hands grabbed for the rocks that seemed placed beneath the hole like ladder rungs and, faster than he would have believed possible, he hauled himself toward the hole and into it.
And then, four of the strangest-looking men he had ever seen, came into view below him.
They were short, and their heads were shaven. They wore leather armor and helmets and each carried a spear, tipped with some coppery metal. They had wide, cruel mouths, and their faces were yellow and oily and their eyes slanted. They reminded Rick of something he had once seen in a book . . . warriors of another age.
And then one of them reached for the rock below Rick’s hiding place and he realized with horror that the men were about to enter the very hole into which he had fled.
He stared about him in the darkness and knew from the draft that the niche was bigger than he had suspected when looking at it from the outside. He could hear even his breath echoing in its confinement, Page 73
and he plunged into the darkness. The light from the entrance helped him find his way for a short distance, but soon he had to resort to his sense of touch to feel his way along the walls.
As long as he moved, he was staying ahead of these strange men. Instinct told him not to stop moving.
Night had never been darker than the trap in which he found himself. It seemed to push against him, and then the wall fell off from his hand and he found himself groping for it in the dark.
“Must be a hole in the wall,” he thought, and started crawling toward it.
It was a narrow niche in the cave that cupped off from the main passage. If the strange warriors were without torches, he might escape detection. He crouched there, digging his fingers into his thighs, listening to the footsteps coming closer and closer.
Then, there was the smell of rancid oil next to him and a heavy foot, inches from his body, and he recoiled.
The other men were close behind, but they, too, passed and he heard them shuffling ahead. Then the sound faded in the darkness.
When he considered it safe, he rose to his feet and made ready to retrace his footsteps to the path outside.