by Andre Norton
“Do we stick here?” Ali asked a last question. And the reply came promptly that they should—unless forced to withdraw. It was more than ever necessary to discover the nature of any native Limbian life.
But the screen which connected them with the valley below remained obstinately dark. There was the rock, the trade goods, and nothing else.
They kept two watches now, one for the screen and the other westward. But no more flares split the night. If a battle had been in progress it was now over.
By Dane’s reckoning it was close to dawn and it was his trick at the screen when the first hint of change came. The movement on the plate before him was so slight that at first he thought he had been mistaken. But a bush to the right of the rock below provided a dark background for something so weird he could not believe he was seeing aright. Luck alone, and reflex action, pressed his finger down on the button of the recorder at the right moment.
For the thing was not only unsubstantial, it was also fast, moving at a speed which blurred its already wispy outline. Dane had seen something, he was sure of that. But what it had been, even its general form, he could not have sworn to.
With both Ali and Tau breathing down the back of his neck, Dane hung over the screen, alert to the slightest movement on its surface. But, though dawn was upon them, and the light was growing better all the time, they could see nothing now but leaves fluttered by the wind. Whatever had passed that way had had no interest in the trade display. They would have to depend upon the film from the recorder to discover what it was.
Limbo’s sun began the upward climb. The rime of nightborn frost which had gathered on the stones of the heights was lapped away. But the valley remained deserted, Dane’s visitor did not return.
The other flitter arrived with a fresh crew to take over the post. Rip walked over to speak to the yawning crew of the first.
“Any luck?” he wanted to know.
“Got something with the recorder—I hope,” Dane replied, but he was feeling more apologetic than triumphant. That faint shadowy thing might not be the owner of the fields—just some passing animal.
“Captain says for you to take a look-see down west before you check in,” Rip added to Tau. “Use your own judgment, but don’t run into anything serious if you can help it.”
The Medic nodded. Ali was at the controls and they took to the air, leaving the relieving crew of the other flitter to take over their watch. Below them spread the now familiar pattern of small, narrow valleys, two or three showing squares of fields. But though Ali buzzed at a low altitude over these, there was no life but vegetation below. The Terran flitter was perhaps five miles on to the west before it came down over a scene of horror,
Smoke still curled sluggishly from smoldering brush and the black burns of high voltage blaster fire crossed and re-crossed the ground, cutting noisome paths through greenery and searing soil and rock.
But it was not that which attracted their attention. It was the things, three of them, huddled together in a rock pocket as if they had tried to make a last stand there against a weapon they did not understand. The contorted, badly burned bodies had little recognizable form now, but the three in the flitter knew that they had once been living creatures.
Ali went for a short run above the valley floor. There was no sign of any life. He maneuvered for a landing close to that pocket. But it wasn’t until they had left the flitter and started to cross a rocky outcrop that they came upon the fourth victim.
He—or it—had been singed by the flame, but not killed at once. Enough will to live had remained to send the pitiful wreckage crawling into a narrow crevice where it must have clung until death loosened its hold and allowed it to tumble slackly into sight again.
Tau went down on one knee beside the twisted body. But Dane, his nostrils filled with a sickening stench which was not all born of the smoldering green stuff, took only one quick look before he closed his eyes and fought a masterly engagement with his churning stomach.
That hadn’t been a man! It resembled nothing he had ever seen or heard described. It—it wasn’t real—it couldn’t be! He gained a minor victory, opened his eyes, and forced himself to look again.
Even allowing for the injuries which had killed it, the creature was bizarre to the point of nightmare. Its body consisted of two globes, one half as large as the other. There was no discernible head at all. From the larger globe protruded two pair of very thin, four jointed limbs which must have been highly flexible. From the small globe another pair which separated at the second joint into limber tentacles, each of which ended in a cluster of hair-fine appendages. The globes were joined by a wasp’s slenderness of waist. As far as Dane could see, and he couldn’t bring himself to the close examination which absorbed Tau, there were no features at all—no eyes, ears, or mouth.
But the oddest sight of all were the globes which formed the body. They were a grayish-white, but semi-transparent. And through the surface one could sight reddish structural supports which must have served the creature as bones, as well as organs Dane had no wish to explore.
“Great space!” Ali exploded. “You can look right through them!”
He was exaggerating—but not so much. The Limbians—if this were a Limbian—were far more tenuous than any creature the Terrans had found before. And Dane was sure that the record film would show that it was a thing such as this which had passed the contact point in the other valley.
Ali stepped around the body to examine the scars left by the blast which had driven the creature into the crevice. He touched a finger gingerly to a blackened smear on the rock and then held it close to his nose.
“Blaster right enough.”
“Do you think Rich——?”
Ali gazed down the valley. Like all the others they had yet sighted it ran from the towering mountains to the blasted plain, and they could not be too far from the ruins where the archaeologists had gone to earth.
“But—why?” Dane asked a second question before his first had been answered.
Had the globe things attacked Rich and his men? Somehow Dane could not accept that. To his mind the limp body Tau was working over was pitifully defenseless. It held not the slightest hint of menace.
“That’s the big question.” Ali tramped on, past the hollow where lay those other dreadfully contorted bodies, down to the edge of the stream, which this valley, as did all the cultivated ones, cradled in its center, the fields strung out along it.
Plain to read here was the mark of the invader. No feet had left that pair of wide ruts crushed deep into the soft ground of the fields. Dane stopped short.
“Crawler! But our crawlers—”
“Are just where they should be, parked under the Queen or in their storage compartments,” Ali finished for him. “And since Rich couldn’t have brought one here in a kit bag, we must believe that Limbo is not as barren of life as Survey certified it to be.” He stood at the edge of the stream and then squatted to study a patch of drying mud. “Track’s odd though—”
Although his opinion had not been asked, Dane joined the Engineer-apprentice. The tread marks had left a pattern, clear as print, for about four inches. He was familiar with the operation of crawlers as they pertained to his own duties. He could even, if the need arose, make minor repairs on one. But he couldn’t have identified any difference in vehicles from their tread patterns. There he was willing to accept Ali’s superior learning.
Kamil’s next move was a complete mystery to Dane. Still on his knees he began measuring the distance between the two furrows, using a small rule from his belt tool kit for a gauge. At last Dane dared to ask a question:
“What’s wrong?”
For a moment he thought that Ali wasn’t going to answer. Then the other sat back on his heels, wiped dust from the rule, and looked up.
“A standard crawler’s a four-two-eight,” he stated didactically. “A scooter is a three-seven-eight. A flamer’s carriage runs fiye-seven-twelve.”
The actua
l figures meant very little to Dane, but he knew their significance. Within the Federation machinery was now completely standardized. It had to be so that repairs from one world to the next would be simplified. Ali had recited the measurements of the three types of ground vehicles in common use on the majority of Federation planets. Though, by rights, a flamer was a war machine, used only by the military or Patrol forces, except on pioneer worlds where its wide heat beam could be turned against rank forest or jungle growth.
“And this isn’t any of those,” Dane guessed.
“Right. It’s three-two-four—but it’s heavy, too. Or else it was transporting close to an overload. You don’t get ruts like these from a scooter or crawler traveling light.” He was an engineer, he should know, Dane conceded.
Then what was it?”
Ali shrugged. “Something not standard—low, narrow, or it couldn’t snake through here, and able to carry a good load. But nothing on our books is like it.”
It was Dane’s turn to study the cliffs about them. “Only one way it could go—up—or down——”
Ali got to his feet. “I’ll go down,” he glanced over at the busy Tau engrossed in his grisly task, “nobody’s going to drag him away from there until he learns all he can.” He shuddered, perhaps in exaggeration, perhaps in earnest. “I have a feeling that it isn’t wise to stay here too long. Any scout will have to be a quick one——”
Dane turned upstream. “I’ll go up,” he said firmly, it was not Ali’s place to give orders, they were equal in rank. He started off, walking between the tracks without looking back.
He was concentrating so on his determination to prove that he could think properly for himself that he made a fatal slip, inexcusable in any Trade-explorer. Though he continued to wear his helmet, along with all the other field equipment, he totally forgot to set his personal corn-unit on alert, and so went blindly off into the unknown with no contact with either of the others.
But at the moment he was far more intent on those tracks which lured him on, up a gradually narrowing valley toward the mountain walls. The climbing sun struck across his path, out there were pools of purple shadow where the cliffs walled off its rays.
The trail left by the crawler ran as straight as the general contour of the ground allowed. Two of the lacy winged flying things they had glimpsed in the other valley skimmed close to the surface of the stream and then took off high into the chill air.
Now the greenery was sparser. He had not passed a field for some time. And underfoot the surface of the valley was inclining up in a gentle slope. The walls curved, so that Dane walked more warily, having no desire to round a projection and meet a blaster user face to face.
He was certain in his own mind that Dr. Rich had something to do with this. But where did this crawler come from? Had the Doctor been on Limbo before? Or had he broken into some cache of Survey supplies? But there was Ali’s certainty that the vehicle was not orthodox.
The trail ended abruptly and in such a manner as to stop Dane short, staring in unbelief. For those ruts led straight to a solid, blank wall of rock, vanishing beneath it as if the machine which had made them had been driven straight through!
There is always, Dane hastily reminded himself, some logical explanation for the impossible. And not Video ones about “force walls” and such either. If those tracks went into the rock, it was an illusion—or an opening—and it was up to him to discover which.
His boots crunched on sand and gravel until he was in touching distance of the barrier. It was then that he became aware of something else, a vibration. It was very silent there in the cramped pocket which was the end of the valley, no wind blew, no leaves rustled. And yet there was something unquiet in the air, a stirring just at the far edge of his sensitiveness to sound and movement.
On impulse he set the palms of his hands against the stone of the cliff. And he felt it instantly, running up his arms into his body until his flesh and bones were only a recorder for that monstrous beat-beat-beat—relayed to him through the stuff of Limbo itself. Yet, when he passed his fingers searchingly over the rough stone, studied each inch of it intently, he could see no break in its surface, no sign of a door, no reason for that heavy thump, thump which shook his nerves. The vibration was unpleasant, almost menacing. He snatched his hands away, suddenly afraid of being trapped in that dull rhythm. But now he was sure that Limbo was not what it seemed—a lifeless, dead world.
For the first time he remembered that he should have maintained contact with the others, and hurriedly turned the key on his com-unit. Instantly Tau’s voice rang thinly in his ears.
“Calling Ali—Calling Thorson—come in—come in!” There was an urgency in the Medic’s voice which brought Dane away from the wall, set him on the back trail even as he replied:
“Thorson here. Am at end of valley. Wish to report——”
But the other cut into that impatiently. “Return to flitter I Ali, Thorson, return to flitter!”
“Thorson returning.” Dane started at the best pace he could muster down the valley. But as he trotted, slipping and sliding on the loose stones and gravel, Tau’s voice continued to call Ali. And from the engineer-apprentice there came no answer at all.
Breathing hard, Dane reached the place where they had left the Medic. As he came into sight Tau waved him to the side of the flitter.
“Where’s Ali?” “Where’s Kamil?” Their demands came together and they stared at each other.
Dane answered first. “He said he was going downstream—to follow the crawler tracks we found. I went upstream——”
“Then it must have been he who—” Tau was frowning. He turned on his heel and studied the valley leading to the plains. The presence of water had encouraged a thicker growth of brush there and it presented a wall except for where the stream cut a passage.
“But what happened?” Dane wanted to know.
“I got a call on com—it was cut off almost immediately——”
“Not mine, I was off circuit,” returned Dane before he thought. It was only then that he realized what he had done. No one on field duty goes off circuit out on scout, that was a rule even a First Circler in the Pool had by heart. And he had done it the first time he was on duty! He could feel the heat spreading up into his cheeks. But he offered no explanations nor excuses. The fault was his and he would have to stand up to the consequences.
“Ali must be in trouble.” Tau made no other comment as he climbed in behind the controls of the flitter, a very quiet Dane followed him.
They arose jerkily, with none of the smooth perfection Ali’s piloting had supplied. But once in the air Tau pointed the nose of the flitter down valley, cutting speed to just enough to keep them airborne. They watched the ground below. But there was nothing to see but the marks of blaster fire and beyond undisturbed green broken by bare patches of gravel and jutting rock.
They could also sight the crawler tracks and Dane related the information he had. Tau’s countenance was sober.
“If we don’t find Ali, we must report to the Queen—”
That was only common sense, Dane knew, but he dreaded having to admit his own negligence. And perhaps his act was worse than just carelessness in not using the com-unit, perhaps he should have insisted on their sticking together, deserted though the valley appeared to be.
“We’re up against something nasty here,” Tau continued. “Whoever used those blasters was outside the law——”
The Federation law dealing with X-Tees was severe, as Dane well knew. Parts of the code, stripped of the legal verbiage, had to be memorized at the Pool. You could defend yourself against the attack of aliens, but on no provocation, except in defense of his life, could a Trader use a blaster or other weapon against an X-Tee. Even sleep rays were frowned upon, though most Traders packed them when going into unknown territory among primitive tribes.
The men of the Queen had landed unarmed on Limbo, and they would continue unarmed until such a time as the situation was so gr
ave that either their lives or the ship was in danger. But in this valley a blaster had been used in the wanton indulgence of someone’s sadistic hatred for the globe creatures.
“They were’t attacking—those globe things, I mean?”
Tau’s brown face was grim as he shook his head. “They had no weapons at all. I’d say from the evidence that they were attacked without warning, just mown down. Maybe for the fun of it!”
And that projected such a picture of horror that Tau, conditioned by life under the Trade Creed, stopped short.
Below them the valley began to widen out, cutting in a fan shape into the plain. There was no sign of Ali anywhere on that fan. He had vanished as if he had stepped through the cliff wall. The cliff! Dane remembering the end of the crawler trail, pressed against the windshield to inspect those walls. But there were no tracks ending before them.
The flitter lost altitude as Tail concentrated on landing. “We must report to the Queen,” he said as he set them down. Not leaving his seat he reached for the long-range beam mike.
7 SHIP OUT OF SPACE
TAU’S FINGERS clicked the call key of the far-range caster when that sound was drowned out by a wail, both weirdly familiar and strangely menacing. Here on the edge of the burnt-off land there was no soughing of the wind, nothing to break the eternal silence of the blasted country. But this tearing over head brought both of the Terrans to their feet. Tau, out of his greater experience, identified it first.
“A ship!”
Dane was no hundred flight man, but something in that shrieking crescendo splitting the sky above them argued that if a ship were coming in, all was not well with it. He caught at Tau’s arm.
“What’s the matter?”
The Medic’s face paled beneath the dark space tan. He bit hard on his lower lip. And the eyes still fastened on the arch of sky were haunted. When he answered he had to scream to be heard over the rumble.
“She’s coining in too fast—not on a braking orbit!”