Chane said, "I'll get him." He shouted to Bollard to stay where he was and take care of McGoun. Then he trotted after Ashton. There was no hurry about it. He watched Ashton pant and strain and stagger up the steep path, watched him stumble and fall and get up again. Go on, you bastard, he thought, cry for it. Enough men have died because of you that you damn well ought to cry.
And he was crying when Chane caught up to him, sitting in the dust with the tears running on his cheeks and the sobs choking him. Chane picked him up and laid him across his shoulders, then took him down and dumped him onto the ground, where he lay exhausted.
Dilullo said, "Bollard, if he tries that again, knock him over with a stunner."
"I'd rather use a laser, but okay," said Bollard, not looking up from his work. He was almost as bloody as
McGoun, working feverishly to stop a welling tide that would not be stopped. Chane was tempted to tell him that he was wasting his time, and then decided not to. It was Bollard's time, "and anyway he would not welcome the Starwolf type of realism. These men always had to try. He went off again with Dilullo, and this time nothing stopped them.
All the way down the mountain Dilullo said not a word, but Chane knew what the other was thinking. He was thinking the same thing himself.
Highly unwelcome thoughts, but they turned out to be true. When they got into the nest of tall rocks where Janssen had hidden the skitter-flier, they found a fused and shattered wreck. Missiles had been fired carefully into it from close range.
"Helmer was a thorough man," said Dilullo. "Damn him."
"There's still Ashton's plane."
"Do you think he would have overlooked it?"
Chane shrugged.
"Well, we'll check it out. We'll get Ashton and ..."
"Take a breather, John," said Chane. "I'll go and fetch him."
Dilullo looked at him bleakly. "I'm so old you want to spare me an extra trip up that slope, is that it?"
"You know," said Chane, "you ought to do something about that age-obsession of yours."
"Aren't Starwolves worried about getting old?" demanded Dilullo.
Chane grinned. "The kind of a life a Starwolf leads, he doesn't have too many worries on that score."
"Ah, get out of here and go," said Dilullo. "After all, why should I wear myself out when I've got a big dumb ox like you to run errands."
Chane went, fast, only slowing down when he came within sight of the others up on the slope.
"McGoun's gone," said Bollard. "Died before I could even get the bleeding all stopped."
Chane nodded. He looked at Vreya, who was not crying now but was sitting with her head drooping beside Raul's body.
"John would want you to build up some rocks over McGoun and Raul too, wouldn't he?" said Chane.
"I suppose he would," said Bollard.
Chane went to where Ashton was sitting. "Come along—we want you to show us where your flier's hidden."
"I will not," said Ashton. "I don't want to leave here. Why should I show you?"
A dark smile came onto Chane's face. "If you don't, I will do some things to you that will give me great pleasure."
Sattargh stood up. He said wearily, "I'll show you. I can't take any more of this."
The thin Arcturian went down the' slope to where Dilullo was waiting. Then he led them for more than a mile along the base of the mountain.
"We couldn't hide it completely," he said, panting. "But we put sand and rock-dust over it wherever we could, to camouflage it."
When they reached the place to which Sattargh led them, a bay that indented the side of the mountain, they found what they expected to find. Ashton's flier was a fused and shapeless mess.
"Now what?" Chane asked Dilullo.
Dilullo said, "Give me a little time to think up a brilliant inspiration. While I'm doing it, you can tell the others to come on down here."
A few hours later, as Allubane was setting, they sat in a circle and ate their rations and looked dismally at each other. When they had finished eating, Dilullo spoke.
"Now I'll tell you how we stand," he said. "We have no flier to get us out of here. We have no long-range communicator, so we can't call Kimmel on Allubane Two and have him bring the ship here."
He got out the map and spread it out, and had Bollard shine his hand-lamp on it as the dusk gathered.
"Now, a Merc likes to have two strings to his bow," said Dilullo. "I plotted out a rendezvous with Kimmel. If he didn't hear from us at all, he was to come to that rendezvous every ten days."
He put his finger on the spot where the great river that flowed north-south ran into one of Arkuu's seas.
"That's where the rendezvous is," he said.
"And where are we?" asked Garcia.
Dilullo put his finger down on another spot on the map. "Here."
"That's an awful long way," said Garcia. "Hundreds of miles ..."
"It is," said Dilullo. "But I've thought up a way we can get to that rendezvous."
"So you've thought up a brilliant inspiration after all?" said Chane.
"Yes, I have," answered Dilullo.
"What is it?" Chane asked. "How do we get there?"
Dilullo looked around at them and said, "We walk."
XVIII
How long had they been walking? Chane tried to reckon it up in his mind. Fourteen days crossing the mountain ranges— no, sixteen, counting the two days they had lost in following a blind lead and returning from it. But how many days in the great forest? How many following the slope of the land downward until it grew hot and humid, and the great trees were replaced by this crimson jungle?
When they had first come over the mountains, Chane had objected to the course Dilullo set.
"This isn't a direct course to the rendezvous. You're angling away northward."
Dilullo had nodded. "But this is the shortest route to that big river."
"The river?"
"Chane, look at these people, the shape some of them are in. They'll never last out the distance to the rendezvous on foot. But if I can get them to the river, we can raft down it to the meeting place."
Chane, looking ahead along the line of his companions as they went through the red jungle, thought to himself that they may have looked poor then, but that that wasn't a patch on the way they looked now.
Sattargh was in the worst shape, but Ashton was not much better. The long periods they had spent in the Free-Faring, returning at only infrequent intervals for food, had sapped their stamina. Garcia was doing better, but he was a scholar, not an adventurer, and he tired fast.
Both Chane and Dilullo had worried about Vreya, but Chane thought now that they needn't have. The tall Ar-kuun girl was magnificent. Her fine golden legs strode along firmly, and she made no complaints about anything.
The yellow sunlight shafted down in broken bars through the dark red foliage of the taller trees. The smaller growth was a bright scarlet. They plodded along after Dilullo, whose turn it was to lead the way, and they had to stop now and then while Dilullo slashed away some impending brush.
Stopping thus now, Chane noticed that Sattargh and Ash-ton sat wearily down on the ground, even for this short halt. It was a bad sign. Sattargh was trying, but Ashton was sullen and resentful, and neither of them really had the strength for this trek.
It seemed very silent in the red jungle. Chane had noticed many birds, some of them surprisingly big and exotic looking, but he had seen very few animals.
He said so to Vreya, standing beside him and brushing her yellow hair back from her damp face, and she nodded.
"The Nanes have almost exterminated many species, except a few kinds of big carnivores in the far south."
Chane thought of the pretty little mouth of the thing he had struggled with. "I wouldn't have thought those things could be flesh-eaters. I saw no teeth."
"They were designed to take liquid artificial food," said Vreya. "But they learned to beat animal flesh into a pulp and ingest it that way."
; "Nice," said Chane, and at that moment Dilullo finished cutting and they started forward again.
Chane looked narrowly at Sattargh and Ashton. Sattargh struggled to his feet, but Ashton looked as though he was just going to sit there. Then he looked up and saw Chane's eye upon him, and got up.
Chane thought, At least two days yet, maybe more, and we'll have trouble with him long before that.
That night they made camp under tall trees, where there was no brush. They made no fire—there was no reason to ask for trouble. They chewed their super-nutritious food tablets and drank the water they had got from streams along the way sterilized with steritablets. As on each night so far, Dilullo insisted that Sattargh and Ashton eat more of the food than they wanted.
Chane sat on the edge of the little clearing, with his back against a big tree and his laser across his knees. Both moons were up and throwing beams of tarnished silver through the foliage. Presently Vreya came through the slanting silver bars of light, and sat down beside him. She uttered a sigh of weariness.
"You've been wonderful, Vreya," he told her. "I didn't think any woman could do it."
"I tire," she said. "But I have something to take back to my people, and I am going to do it."
"The Free-Faring? You'll tell them about it?"
"I will," she said. "I'll take them to it, as many as I can. I'll have them go out in the Free-Faring and see how glorious the outer stars and worlds can be. And we'll open the Closed Worlds, for all time to come."
"You'll only get caught by that insidious thing, the way Ashton and Sattargh and Raul were caught," he said. "You'll end up as they would have ended if we hadn't come."
She shook her head. "No. I will not be caught. You were not caught, because you have some wild strength in you that I cannot understand. I too have strength."
"What about those who don't have it?"
"I've thought of that. We'll find some way to protect them, make sure they don't go too far. It can be done, Chane. It's a risk, yes. But what is ever gained without risk?"
He couldn't answer that. Least of all, he.
On the following morning, two hours after they started, Sattargh collapsed. His legs simply crumpled under him.
"Just a little rest," he panted. "I'll be all right then ..."
Chane had come to have an admiration for the thin, aging Arcturian scholar. He said, "All right, get a rest. I'll tell John."
Dilullo came back, his long face getting longer as he looked at Sattargh.
"Ten minutes rest," said Sattargh. "Then I can go on."
But when the ten minutes had passed and he tried to get up, he fell back.
"Ah-huh," said Dilullo. "I thought so. Get out the sling litter."
The litter, a compact net of thin, strong strings, was affixed to two poles cut from the brush. Garcia took the front end of it and Chane the rear, and they went on.
By the time they camped that night, they were an exhausted lot, except for Chane. They sprawled on the ground in the darkness, unable even to eat until they had some rest. Chane sat, chewing his food-tablets.
Something lithe and white and swift flashed out of the darkness and snatched up Ashton's limp form from the edge of the group and darted away with it.
In a split-second Chane was on his feet and hurling himself in pursuit. He used all his Starwolf speed, not caring whether the others saw or not.
He was only a few yards behind the Nane. The creature could probably have distanced him if it had been unburdened, but it would not let go of Ashton. Crashing through brush, leaping fallen logs, Chane put on a terrific burst of speed. They had come a long way for Ashton, and gone through a lot, and Ashton himself might not be worth it, but the work and wounds and death were not going to be for nothing.
The Nane dropped Ashton and tore with unbelievable strength at Chane's arms. Chane locked'his hands together like iron and yelled.
"John! Here!"
The Nane made mewing, sobbing sounds, and struggled to break Chane's grip. Chane did not think he could hold it many moments longer.
There was a crashing in the brush and Dilullo and Bollard came running through the broken moonlight. They had their jungle knives, and they stabbed them into the Kane's body.
The Nane stopped trying to break Chane's grip, and struck with its hands, and Dilullo went flying backward.
Bollard stabbed again and again. Chane could hear the knifeblade driving home with a strange dull sound, as though it was sticking into some sort of sponge.
"Can't kill the thing," Bollard panted.
Chane suddenly let go of the Nane's neck. Still riding the creature's back, he shifted his grip downward to pinion the thing's arms.
The strength of those arms was so great that Chane knew he could not hold the grip more than a few seconds. Bollard hacked and stabbed furiously, and all at once the Nane fell down and lay still.
"My God, what a thing," said Bollard, gasping. He was utterly shaken. "Didn't seem to have any vital organs at all ..."
Chane ran to where Dilullo was getting up from the tangle of brush into which the Nane had hurled him.
"No bones broken," said Dilullo, "but I'll have some bruises. When the critter grabbed me to throw me, I thought its hands would break me in half."
Bollard was bending over Ashton's limp form.
"Choked unconscious," he said. "Probably to keep him from crying out when the thing grabbed him. He should come round."
They carried Ashton back into camp. "Three men on guard at all times," said Dilullo. "Each with one of the lasers."
Vreya was looking at Chane in wonder. "You pursued a Nane?" she said. "I didn't think anyone ..."
"Looks like we're getting back into their territory," said Dilullo.
Vreya nodded. "Yes, the dead city M'lann where most of the Nanes were created long ago is not too far southeast of here."
Dilullo got out his map and a hand-lamp, and squatted on the ground studying. "Yes," he said. "M'lann's about a hundred and fifty miles southeast. The river runs through it."
He snapped off the light. "All right, those not on guard might as well get some sleep. We need rest bad enough."
Next morning, they found that the nightmare attack had had one beneficient result. Randall Ashton had recovered consciousness in a state of absolute horror. He made none of his usual sullen objections when they started. He kept looking nervously around the jungle and then back at his companions, as though he was afraid they might leave him alone here. Sattargh said that this day he was able to walk.
In mid-afternoon, as they went along the bank of a small stream. Chane saw a white shape flitting in the brush and let go with his laser at it.
Ten minutes later, two Nanes flashed from behind big trees just ahead of them. Dilullo fired and missed, but Bollard, who had the third laser, cut one down and the other flashed away.
"The woods seem to be full of them," said Bollard. "Have they got some way of letting each other know we're here?"
Chane wondered about that too. The very fact of the existence of the Nanes was nightmarish. They were a by-product of that same science that had produced the Free-Faring, and Chane thought that that science had been a curse to this world, creating a horde of almost immortal horrors to prey upon all life.
That night, Dilullo was sitting rubbing his bruises when Chane gave up his guard post to Janssen. Dilullo said nothing for a time, but his face had deep lines of pain and fatigue etched into it.
"I was just thinking," he said finally. "I was thinking of a beautiful white house, with a fountain and flowers and everything in it the finest. I was wondering if it's worth it."
Chane grinned. "You'll have your fine house someday, John. And you'll sit in front of it and admire your flowers for two weeks, and then you'll get up and go back to Merc Hall."
Dilullo looked at him. "That's what I like about you, Chane— you're always so cheery and encouraging. Will you please get away from me?"
Twice in the night they were awakened by las
er blasts, as their guards fired at lurking Nanes. In the morning they learned that one of the lasers was dead, its charge exhausted.
Dilullo nodded. "I'm not surprised; we used them pretty freely on Helmer's fliers. Save the other two as much as you can."
That day's march was as nightmarish as the one before, with only one actual attempted attack by Nanes, but with frequent sight of one or two of the creatures slipping along parallel with them.
They had to carry Sattargh most of that day. And by night, Chane saw that Randall Ashton was giving out. He was trying hard; he had been so frightened that he dreaded the possibility of being left behind. But he was just not going to make it much further.
Vreya lay that night as in a stupor when Chane went to her, her eyes closed, her breath gasping. Yet she still had not made one complaint.
He stroked her hair. Weakly, she took his hand to her mouth and made to bite his finger.
Chane laughed and hugged her. "Vreya, I've never seen a girl like you."
"Go away and let me sleep," she mumbled.
Ashton began to give out before they had gone an hour on the next day's march. He started to fall over small obstacles.
When Chane was not helping to carry the litter, he took Ashton's shoulder and steadied him.
"Thanks," said Ashton. "I ... I don't want to fall behind ..."
Dilullo suddenly called a halt. Ahead of them the tall trees thinned out and they glimpsed a wide tawny flood, turned to brilliance by the yellow light of Al-lubane.
The river.
They sat down on its bank and for a while they were too stupid and exhausted to do anything but just look at it, the vast heaving flood, rolling between jungled banks, coming out of mystery above, going into mystery below.
"All right," said Dilullo finally. "A raft won't build itself. We haven't got tools to cut trees so we'll have to use one of the lasers. Bollard, see to it. I'll stand guard with the other laser."
The scorching lash of the laser felled and trimmed the trees they needed. But by the time they finished, that laser was exhausted also.
Chane rolled the logs down to the river. Bollard brought from one of the packs a coil of steel twine, thin as cord and strong as cable.
Starwolf (Omnibus) Page 26