by Andre Norton
Freedom! He dragged himself to his feet. Free to go! He slipped Hume’s ray-tube back into his belt. Hume was still in the valley!
Vye rubbed his shaking hands across his face. Through the barrier and free—but Hume was back there, without a weapon, defenseless against any questing beast able to nose him out. Sickly, without water and protection, he was a dead man even while he still breathed.
Keeping one hand against the wall of the gap in support, Vye started to walk, not out of the gap towards the distant lowlands, but back into the valley, forcing himself to that by his will alone and screaming inside against such suicidal folly. He put out his hand tentatively when he reached the two points of rock where that curtain had hung. There was no obstruction—the barrier was down! He must get back to Hume.
Still keeping his wall hold, Vye lurched through the gate, was once more in the valley. He stood swaying, listening. But once again there was silence, not even the wind moved through trees or bushes. Placing one foot carefully before the other he went on towards Hume’s cave. The haze which had clouded his thinking processes since that first morning’s awakening in this bowl was gone now. Except for the physical weakness that weighted his body, he felt once more entirely alive and alert.
Wriggling in the cave’s entrance was the Hunter. He had freed the bonds Vye had put on his legs, but his hands were still tied. His face, grimy, sweat-covered, was turned up to the sunlight, and his eyes were again bright with reason.
Vye found the strength to run the last few feet between them. He was fumbling with those ties about Hume’s wrists as he blurted out the news. The barrier was out—they could go.
Then he was bringing one of those precious bulbs, raising it to Hume’s eager mouth, squeezing a portion of its contents between the man’s cracked and bleeding lips.
Somehow they made that trip back to the valley gate. When they saw their goal, Hume broke from Vye’s hold, tottered forward with a cry not far removed from a sob. He rebounded to slip full length to the ground and lie there. Sobbing dryly, his gaunt face, eyes closed, turned up to the sky. The trap had snapped shut once again.
“Why—why?” Vye found he was repeating the same words over and over, his gaze blank, unfocused, yet turned to the woods of the lake.
“Tell me what happened again.”
Vye’s head came around. Hume had pulled himself up so that his shoulders rested against the rock wall. His plasta-hand was outflung, slipping up and down what seemed empty air, but which was the barrier against freedom. And now his eyes seemed entirely sane.
Slowly, hesitating between words, Vye went over the full account of his visit to the lake, his reheat before the beasts, his fortunate stumble through the gap.
“But you came back.”
Vye flushed. He was not going to by to explain that. Instead he said: “If it went away once, it can again.”
Hume did not press the subject of his return. Rather he fastened upon the end of that action with the wounded beast, made Vye go through it verbally a third time.
“There is just this,” he said when the other was done. “When you fell you were not thinking of the barrier at all—and your wits were working again. You had come out of the daze we both had.”
Vye tried to remember, decided that the Hunter was correct. He had been trying to elude the charge of the beast, only, fear and that desperate desire had occupied his mind at that moment. But what did that signify?
To test just what he did not know, he crawled now to Hume’s side, put up his own hand to the space where the plasta-flesh palm slid back and forth on nothingness. But he almost fell on his face, forward into the gap. Where he had been expecting the resistance of the unseen curtain there had been nothing at all! He turned to Hume with the expression of a man who had been stunned by an unexpected blow.
11
“It is open for you!” Hume broke the quiet first. His eyes were very bleak in his bony face.
Vye stood up, took one step and was on the other side of the curtain where Hume’s hand still found substance. He came back with the same lack of hindrance. Yes, to him there was no longer a barrier. But why—why him when Hume was still a prisoner?
The Hunter raised his head so his eyes could meet Vye’s with the authority of an order. “Go, get away while you can!”
Instead Vye dropped down beside the other. “Why?” he asked baldly. And then the most obvious of all answers came.
He glanced at Hume. The Hunter’s head lolled back against the rock which supported him, his eyes were closed now, and he had the look of a man who had been driven to the edge of endurance and was now willing to relinquish his grip and let go.
Deliberately, Vye brought up his right hand, balled his fingers into a fist. And just as deliberately he struck home, square on the point of that defenseless chin. Hume sagged, would have slipped down the surface of the rock had Vye’s hands not caught in his armpits.
Since he had not the strength left to get to his feet with such a burden, Vye crawled, dragging the inert body of the Hunter with him. And this time, as he had hoped, there was no resistance at the gap. Unconscious, Hume was able to cross the barrier. Vye stretched him as comfortably flat as he could, used a portion of their water on his face until he moaned, muttered, and raised his hand feebly to his head.
Then those gray eyes opened, focused on Vye.
“What—”
“We’re both through now, both of us!” The younger man saw Hume glance around him with waking belief.
“But how—?”
“I knocked you out, that’s how,” Vye returned.
“Knocked me out? I crossed when I was unconscious!” Hume’s voice steadied, strengthened. “Let me see!” He rolled over on his side, threw out his arm, and this time the hand found no wall. For him, too, the barrier was gone.
“Once through, you are free,” he added wonderingly. “Maybe they never foresaw any escapes.” He struggled up, sitting with his hands hanging loosely between his knees.
Vye turned his head, looked down the trail. The length of distance lying between them and the safari camp now faced them with a new problem. Neither of them could make that trek on foot.
“We’re out, but we aren’t back—yet,” Hume echoed his thought.
“I was wondering, if this door is open—” Vye began.
“The flitter!” Again Hume’s mind matched his. “Yes, if those globes aren’t hanging around just waiting for us to try.”
“They might act only to get us here, not to keep us once we’re in.” That might be wishful thinking, they wouldn’t know until they tried to prove it.
“Give me a hand.” Hume held out his own, let Vye pull him to his feet. Weak as he was, he was clear-eyed, plainly clear-headed once more. “Let’s go!”
Together they went back through the gap, then tested the absence of the barrier once more, to make sure. Hume laughed. “At least the front door remains open, even if we find the back one closed.”
Vye left him sitting by that entrance while he made a quick trip to the cave to pick up the small pack of supplies left them. When he returned they crammed tablets into their mouths, drank feverishly of the lake water, and, with the stimulation of the new energy, set off along the cliff face.
“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—could 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 comer 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 overnight, 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 roused 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 th
ey’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 backpack.”
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.”