The fliers screamed by high overhead, heading toward the mountains. But they were already starting to curve around.
"We'll have them back in a moment," said Dilullo. "Shift to the other side of the boulder." He added angrily, "Damn it, Chane—move!"
Chane was staring wonderingly at the five fliers. Two of them, the two at one end of their formation, had passed right over the top of the conical mountain.
The other three were coming around and beginning a swoop that would take them lower over the Mercs. But those two were behaving oddly. They drifted away as though out of control, turned their noses downward, and went into a rambling, suicidal dive that crashed them on the rocks not far away.
"What the devil?" began Dilullo, and then cried, "Jump!"
They got around to the other side of the boulder just before the missiles came. This time the boulder took a direct hit on its other side, and heaved up as though about to explode to fragments.
But it settled back, leaving them shaken. They picked themselves up as the fliers screamed on past.
"What brought those two down?" demanded Milner. "We sure didn't."
"I got a good look at the one that crashed nearest to us, just before it hit," said Chane. "The men in it seemed to be dead, their heads hanging, before they even hit the ground."
"They were the only two that went right over the mountain," said Dilullo, staring up at the vast, dark conical mass. He frowned in thought. Then he said, "Chane, you can operate that detector in the flier?"
Chane nodded. "Then get back there fast and get a fix on the radiation again," said Dilullo. "I want to know whether it seems to come from that mountain."
"What's the matter with me going?" demanded Bollard. "I'm the best instrument man here."
"You're also a famous beer-drinker, and fat, and Chane can run twice as fast as you," said Dilullo. "Does that answer your question?"
Chane grinned, and took off. When he was around the boulder and out of sight of the rest of them, he put his Starwolf speed into it, bounding over the broken rock like a panther.
He thought, as he had thought many times before, that Dilullo gave him a lot of the dirty jobs because he knew Chane had that Varnan strength and speed. The devil of it was that he couldn't use it openly without making others suspect his Starwolf origin, and that had got him into some pretty tight pinches.
As he ran he looked away to the east, expecting the Arkuun fliers to come screaming back at them. But the three fliers were circling, not rtioving back to another attack on the Mercs.
Chane could understand that. Helmer — if Helmer had not been in one of the two crashed fliers — would certainly be cautious now about flying near the mountain.
Chane dived into the flier, and to the cockpit. He turned the detector on, then started rotating the sensor.
When the sensor pointed toward the conical mountain, the detector seemed to go crazy. The strength-indicator loops of light became wild squiggles, as though there wasn't a big enough grid to show what was happening to them.
Chane tried two complete rotations .of the sensor and both times it happened. He shut off the instrument, and jumped out of the flier.
Looking eastward, he was surprised to see the three Arkuun fliers going away. When he reached the boulder, the Mercs had come out from behind it. They too were watching the departing fliers.
Chane pretended to pant as he asked, "You think they're scared off?"
"I wish they were," said Dilullo. "But as we were coming down I noticed a flat area miles east of here, big enough for them to land their fliers on. I think they'll be back, on foot. We've not got all the time in the world."
Chane told him of what the detector had revealed. Dilullo's horse-like face got longer as he looked up at the huge bulk of the conical mountain.
"Then whatever makes the radiation is on the mountain," he said. "Has to be. If the source was further than that mountain..."
"Then that's where Ashton went?" said Bollard. "Where this Free-Faring is supposed to be?"
"We'll hope so."
Bollard shook his head, "It gets crazier. A multimillionaire nutty enough to come to a hole like this chasing a myth about the Free-Faring. And then those Arkuuns in the two fliers tumbling dead out of the sky, just like that."
"Maybe they weren't dead," said Vreya.
Chane looked at her. "I saw them, Vreya. I saw them as they fell."
"Maybe their minds had been released from their bodies," she said. "That's what the Free-Faring was supposed to do. Maybe that's why they fell."
XIII
From high up in the windy darkness, on a ledge a third of the way up the mountain, Chane stared down with Dilullo and Bollard.
"Nothing yet," he said. "Maybe they won't try it till daylight."
"They'll try it," said Dilullo. "I've seen a lot of men, and these Arkuuns are some of the toughest. Besides, there'll be one of the moons up in a few minutes."
They continued to watch and listen, looking down the narrow, twisting path by which they had ascended. Presently there was an elfin shimmer of light from the horizon and the nearer of the two silver-pink moons floated up into the sky.
They had got up here just as night was falling. There had been a short, frenzied time of activity down below, before they left. As Allubane set, they had worked feverishly to get out of the flier all their gear that they might need.
Milner and Janssen had come back from scouting, just as it was getting dark. Milner had found what they were looking for, a nest of tall rocks not too far away, in which the flier could be hidden with the hope that it would not be too easily found.
In the twilight, Janssen had done a marvellous job of piloting, taking the flier up only a few yards and hedge-hopping with it and putting it down amid the concealing rocks of that nest. Then he had come running back and they had shouldered their packs and started for the mountain.
They found the path almost at once. It looked as though it had been worn by the feet of ages, twisting here and there amid the beetling rocks and crags, going steadily up the steep slope. They reached this ledge just as complete darkness fell, and here they stopped. The others were chewing rations farther along the ledge, while Chane and Bollard and Dilullo, their lasers in their hands, had gone down and watched the path.
"You hear anything?" Bollard asked Chane. "I notice you've got keen ears."
"Not a thing," said Chane.
The second moon came up, perpetually chasing the first one, and the tarnished silver light became stronger.
Chane saw Dilullo peering intently downward, his harsh face made harsher by the light.
"They're down there," said Dilullo. "And they'll try it sooner or later. I wish I had a guarantee we'll live the night out."
Chane grinned. "What do you care? You've got no wife and children to worry about."
Dilullo said in a flat voice, "That's right, I haven't. All right, I'll watch from a little higher up. I'll have Milner and Janssen relieve you in three hours."
Dilullo turned and went back up the path. Bollard looked after him, watching him go in the silver light.
When Dilullo was out of sight, Bollard did a thing that utterly amazed Chane. He turned and struck Chane with all his force, with a flat hand across the face.
Bollard was flat and sloppy but he was strong. Chane staggered back against an outcropping boulder beside the path.
Bollard came in and grabbed him by the collar.
It was not the moon-faced, cheery Bollard now.
Bollard had been a Merc for many years and you did not live years like that without some iron in you, and all the iron showed in his moonlit face as he glared at Chane.
"You ever say a thing like that again and I'll kill you, Chane," he said, his fist raised.
Chane was too astonished even to lift his hands. "What ..." he began.
Bollard lowered his fist. "You mean you don't know? John never told you?"
"Told me what?" demanded Chane.
"You mad
e that crack about John having no wife and children," said Bollard. "He had them once, years ago. A beautiful wife and a little boy and a girl. He came back with me from a mission to Spica, to find there'd been a fire in his house and all three of them dead."
Bollard looked down the moonlit, rocky slope. "I remember that after the funeral, I went with John where his house had been, and we looked at the ashes. He kept saying to me, 'It doesn't make sense, that a man can fly to the stars and yet lose his whole family in a stinking, lousy fire. It just doesn't make sense.' "
Chane was silent. Then he said, "I'll be back in a moment," and went up the path.
Dilullo was standing where the path joined the ledge, looking and listening, his laser gleaming in the moonlight.
"John," said Chane. "I didn't know. I'm sorry ..."
"For Godalmighty's sake," said Dilullo. "Now I've heard everything. A Starwolf making an apology. In the whole galaxy, nobody would believe it."
Then he changed his tone and growled, "Get back down there where you're supposed to be, Chane. And forget it. You couldn't know."
Chane said nothing, but turned and went back down the path.
They had watched for more than two hours when they heard sounds. Sounds of feet on rock and grit, trying to be quiet but still audible.
"They're coming," muttered Bollard. "But we won't be able to see them to use the lasers till they're right on us. This is going to be murder. Literally."
"You watch," said Chane. "Maybe I can discourage them a little."
He put down his laser and went to the boulder beside the path and leaned against it. It held firm. He put into his arms and legs all the strength that Varna had given him, and pushed.
The boulder heaved, a very little. He pushed further, .and then all of a sudden the boulder came out of the soil and toppled and rolled. It went down the moonlit slope with a mighty noise, clashing against other rocks, bounding and bumping and raising the devil altogether.
They heard a muffled exclamation from down the slope, and a sound of feet moving fast, and then nothing but the receding bump and clash of the big rock going faster and faster down to the valley.
Chane picked up his laser. "I don't think it got any of them— it rolled wide of the path. But it may make them decide to wait till daylight."
Bollard stared open-mouthed. "How in the world could you push a rock that size?"
"It was just barely balanced on the slope," Chane lied. "I felt it sway a little when you banged me back against it."
Dilullo came down and listened with them. There were no more stealthy sounds from below.
"They'll wait for daylight," Dilullo said. "Which means we'd better be on our way well before the sun rises."
Janssen came down presently to relieve Chane.
"What's that lump inside your coverall?" demanded Dilullo.
Unwillingly, Janssen fished out the half-full bottle of brandy. "Thought I'd bring this along, for emergencies."
"Good thinking, Janssen," said Dilullo. "For that, you can have a drink of it."
Janssen's face brightened in the moonlight.
"When you've finished your watch," said Dilullo, and took the bottle from his hand and went up the path.
Chane followed him up to the ledge. Milner was sleeping. Garcia was not in sight. Vreya was sitting and looking up at the sky in which the two moons now rode royally amid the glittering stars of the Perseus Arm. Chane went over and sat down beside her.
"So many stars," she said, in a low voice, and then added passionately, "and we cannot go to them, we must stay forever on our little worlds."
She lowered her gaze and looked at Chane. "You have been to many of them?"
"Not in this Arm," Chane said. "But to many stars ... yes."
She gripped his hand. "I believe now that the Free-Faring is here, Chane. Very near to us. The gateway to the stars."
He stared at her incredulously. "You can't really think that a man's mind could leave his body and go starfaring?"
"I do think it," she said. Her clear-cut face was rapt. "What I have always dreamed of—the freedom of the universe. And perhaps close ... very close."
She looked up again at the glistening vault above. Of a sudden, Chane got a strange, chilling feeling that not only did she believe it, but that it might be true.
There was a sound of running feet, and Chane grabbed his laser and sprang up. But it was Garcia who came running from farther along the ledge.
"I've found something," he said. "Not a hundred yards farther along here. Some kind of a passage ..."
Dilullo got up and he and Chane followed Garcia. They came to a place where there was a cliff of rock right above the ledge. There was enough moonlight to show them the dark opening of a tunnel leading into the rock.
"No hand-lamps till we get well inside," said Dilullo.
They went in, moving cautiously, for the darkness in the tunnel was intense. The floor under their feet seemed perfectly level and smooth. When they had gone a score of steps, Dilullo flashed on his hand-lamp.
Chane looked around wonderingly. They stood in a big man-made tunnel of softly gleaming metal. It was like a square with an arch on top, in cross-section, and it was at least twenty feet across.
It ran straight into the heart of the mountain as far as they could see.
"Some kind of old aqueduct?" said Garcia puzzledly.
"No," said Dilullo. "I think this is a road to something."
Yes, thought Chane. A road to something. To the Free-Faring?
He shook off the thought. Vreya's talk was starting to make him think old impossible myths could be true.
"Maybe it's just a blind alley?"
Chane shook his head. "You can feel a strong draft of air coming through from ahead. It opens out somewhere."
Dilullo made his decision. "We're going in. It may be the way Ashton went. At the worst, this tunnel could be far more easily defended than that ledge on the mountainside. Chane, get all the others and bring them here. With all our gear."
When Chane had brought them, Dilullo gave them no time to stare around. He started down the straight tunnel, with Bollard beside him and both their hand-lamps beamed ahead.
There was nothing at all to see. Their boots made echoes in the big metal tube and the echoes were now ahead of them and now behind them, so that the ears were confused. Chane stopped twice and beamed his lamp behind them, under the impression of following footsteps.
The thing went on and on. They were going, straight as an arrow, deep into the heart of the mountain. And still that cool breeze from ahead hit their faces.
The breeze got stronger. The echoes from ahead sounded different.
"Hold it," said Dilullo.
Ahead, the tunnel seemed to debouch into a vast, vaguely lit space.
"Now we'll take this easy," said Dilullo. "Remember what happened to the men in those two fliers. I'll have a look."
Dilullo went forward slowly, until he seemed to stand on the very brink. They saw his head turn this way and that, gazing.
He stood there for what seemed to Chane a long time before he turned around and motioned them forward. They went, with slow steps.
Chane's first impression when he stood at the end of the tunnel was that it opened into the side, not the bottom, of a vast well.
There was no doubt at all that this colossal shaft was man-made, for it was lined with the same gleaming metal as the tunnel. It was at least a thousand feet in diameter, and high above them it was open to the sky. Oblique moonlight struck down and was reflected from the gleaming walls.
There was a wide ledge all around the well, level with the tunnel in whose mouth they stood. They stepped out onto the ledge and peered down. Far, far below them lay the floor of the gigantic shaft. They could see it because it had light down there from another source than the moonlight above.
The light came from an area a hundred feet in diameter, exactly centered in the floor of the gigantic shaft. This area was not smooth but consis
ted of countless facets, and the facets glowed with a cold blue light, not at all intense but with a strange quality in it that Chane had never seen before.
"Look there!" said Bollard, pointing.
Chane saw now what he had missed in the first stunning impression of the place.
At four points equally spaced around the ledge, wide walks of massive metal ran out into the well. They ran to a circular platform of what looked like glass, exactly the same size as the blue-glowing area on the floor below, and situated exactly above the latter.
Three men lay unmoving on the glass plate out there. One wore the costume of Arkuu, and the other two were dressed in coveralls.
Dilullo twisted the focus of his lamp and sent a long narrow beam at one of the latter two, who lay face upward.
"Ashton!" cried Garica. "And he's dead!"
From far around the well, from the shadowy ledge hundreds of feet away, a voice spoke dully.
"Not dead," it said. "Not dead, but gone. Gone on the Free-Faring."
XIV
"McGoun!" exclaimed Garcia, and a figure advanced out of the shadows.
"Garcia," it said. "And who are these?"
Garcia babbled explanations. As he did so, Dilullo sized up Jewett McGoun.
A stocky middle-aged man who at the moment looked older than he was. His flat, seamy face quivered with self-pity, and his dark eyes were rimmed with red and seemed about to burst into tears at any moment.
"You don't know what I've been through, Garcia," he said. "None of you ..."
Dilullo's voice cracked like a whip. "Chane! You and Milner watch that tunnel."
Chane nodded and went with Milner to the place where the tunnel debouched onto the ledge. But from there he could see and hear McGoun.
McGoun was practically crying. "A billion dollars. Maybe many billions. Right here, for the taking away. And Ashton ..."
"What about Ashton?" asked Garcia. "You said he had gone on the Free-Faring? And what about Sattargh?"
McGoun pointed to the glass platform suspended out there over the pit.
"There they are. And Raul, too. They had to try the FreeFaring. They wouldn't be content just to find its secret and then sell it. Billions! But they had to try it ..."
Starwolf (Omnibus) Page 22