"But he said nothing about the Hunters? He left no word about them?" Rianna said incredulously. "Scientists have been searching for centuries for some reliable knowledge of the Hunters; most people think of them as legends! He should have written up the account of his experiences!"
Cliff-Climber said indifferently, "Why? Why should anyone care?"
Rianna looked indignant, but Dane nodded. He was getting used to Cliff-Climber's lack of what most people would call scientific curiosity. He said to Rianna, "The old proverb on my world says that curiosity killed the cat, and Cliff's people seem to have taken it to heart. Let's face it; scientific investigation is a proto-simian characteristic, at least curiosity for its own sake. Even ordinary cats seldom show much curiosity about anything unless they can eat it or play with it, or they think it's a danger to them."
Dallith said peacefully, "The important thing is that survivors are freed." She sorted out an assortment of small, round, completely smooth stones for her sling and tied them into a sack at her waist. They were all looking over their weapons, knowing the hour was at hand. Rianna had sharpened one of her knives to a slashing edge and the other point for a thrusting edge; Dane lifted a long spear off the wall and handed it to her. He said, "Carry this. It's not so much that you have to use it, but there should be one long-distance weapon."
She lifted it, balanced it, saying, "This one is too long for me," and chose a shorter one. Dane, watching her completely absorbed in the weapon, had no particular qualms for her. His attempt to work her into a fighting machine had succeeded better than he had hoped.
Briefly, he explained his plan to them, if it turned out that they could stay and fight together instead of singly. Rianna, at the center of a wedge with her long spear, would present a formidable front to an attacker, with her knives and Cliff-Climber's razor-claws for close-quarter attack; Dane and Aratak to either side, Dane with the samurai sword, Aratak with his great club and the short ax he had tied to his belt; and Dallith bringing up the rear with her sling to pick off anyone trying to rush them from behind.
Cliff-Climber frowned, and Dane knew that the Mekhar was the weak link. Cliff-Climber preferred to think of this as a series of duels against individual attackers.
"Can't you see," Dallith said patiently, "that is what the Hunters will be expecting—that we will fight singly. If we remain a unit, and back one another up, we may all have a better chance."
Cliff-Climber frowned again, as if he smelled something bad, and Dane wished Dallith had let Rianna speak to him. Cliff-Climber had come to respect Rianna as a fighter against whom he himself needed to be seriously on guard; Dallith, to him, was a nonentity. The cat-man looked now to Rianna as if expecting that she would back him up, but she said firmly, "Dallith is right," and he shrugged.
"I gave you my word; you have none of you given me cause to break it, so for now I will not withdraw. I warn you, however, that I refuse to compromise my honor."
With that, they had to be content.
Dane held the samurai sword on his knee for some time, thinking about the unknown long-dead Earthman. He did not know how the samurai warrior had died, but he knew he must have done it valiantly. But Dane was a man of another century and another life, and he wanted mainly to live. The samurai would probably have understood Cliff-Climber better than Dane himself. Cliff-Climber was concerned to die with honor; Dane intended, if he must die, to sell his life as dearly as possible, but mostly he intended to stay alive—he intended that all of them should stay alive!
The bright day was shortening toward afternoon, and the sun dropping, when Rianna clutched Dane's arm and said, in a tense undertone, "Look!"
At the far end of the Armory, a small procession was entering, and a strange one. There was a whole small army of the mechanical servomechs of Server's type, surrounding a single living creature. He wore the terracotta tunic of the Sacred Prey. He was hung heavily with garlands of green leaves and flowers. Servers bore his weapons—a long spear, a round spiked shield—ceremoniously on trays of precious metal, and as the prisoners looked on, hung the weapons in a prominent place on the Armory wall.
Cliff-Climber said, low-voiced, "He must be the survivor of the Hunt."
"An only survivor," Aratak said grimly, and his gills glowed blue.
Dane said, "A spider-man," in surprise. There had been one of them aboard the Mekhar slave ship, and he had spent all his time huddled, hissing, in a corner. The spider-things were certainly the last race Dane would have thought of as fierce enough to survive a Hunt! And yet one of them had done so, for here he was, being honored....
He said, half to himself, "He met the Hunters, and lived. I'd like to have a word with him...." But, the weapons hung, the victorious survivor was being carefully shepherded out of the Armory again, encircled by his guard of attentive and solicitous robot Servers.
Well, well, thought Dane. You never know. If that thing could live through eleven days of a Hunt, there's certainly plenty of chance for us.
"That's by no means certain," Dallith said close to his ear, and Dane realized she was picking up his thoughts again. "Maybe he was lucky, or maybe he managed to spend all eleven days in hiding."
Dane nodded. "Maybe." But that meant it was not an arena, it meant there was some cover and some place to hide if necessary.
It meant that somehow or other he, Dane, must manage to get a word alone with the victor....
The sun was beginning to go down when Server returned to direct them to the baths. He brought fresh clothing for them all—the same terra-cotta color dedicated to the Sacred Prey, but this was definitely fighting gear. The tunics provided for the women were short and could be tucked up even shorter. For Dane, Rianna, and Dallith there were new strong-soled sandals, although neither Cliff-Climber nor Aratak needed any protection for their feet.
"You are to adorn yourselves for the feast of reward and victory, so that you may see what may be in store for you," Server said. "Gird yourselves with your chosen weapons, for you will be taken directly from the feast to the place of the Hunt."
Dane said to the robot, voicing a thought that had come to him as a dim suspicion more than once, "You seem pretty involved in all this, Server. Answer me one question, will you?"
"A dozen, if it is necessary," the servomech said in his fiat mechanical voice. "We are here to serve and to instruct and aid you."
"Are you people—you robots—are you yourselves the Hunters?"
It would explain so much. It would explain the fact that they were the only ones who contacted the Mekhar ship. It would explain the way they cared for their Prey. It would explain the way they clustered around to protect and honor the victor.
But the thought of facing a group of abnormally knowing servomechanisms, in duel, was horrifying... These thoughts raced through his brain as he awaited Server's answer. It actually seemed, insofar as a faceless metal mechanism with no features except small metal-mesh apertures could express anything, that Server had expected any question but that one and perhaps, even, that Dane had found at last a question that the robot was not programmed to answer!
At last, however, Server said, in the same flat and inexpressive mechanical tone, "As we have told you, we are Servers. You will meet with the Hunters at the appointed time. May we assist you now to your baths?"
Dane went with him. There was nothing else he could do. He didn't really answer, he thought grimly. He said, We are Servers. He didn't say, We are not Hunters.
He caught up with Dallith and Rianna as they were separating from Cliff-Climber and Aratak, and said hastily, "Cover for me if that metal monstrosity comes around snooping. I'm going off and see if I can get a line on where they're keeping the victor stashed until this fancy feast. If I could have ten minutes when he's not being surrounded, I estimate our chances for life would be roughly doubled."
Rianna nodded. "If they come looking for you here, I'll tell them you went for a mud bath with Aratak, and, Aratak, if they look for him there, tell them he's
swimming."
Dane hurried off across the garden-park. He had observed the direction in which the procession of Servers had taken the garlanded spider-man.
I hope to hell he's got a translator disk; Rianna said some of them didn't, he thought, as he went warily through the gardens and clustered flowering bushes. The sun was sinking fast, and on the horizon was a strange blood-red light which showed where the full Red Moon was rising again.
I'll be up there by morning, he thought. It's the payoff. His throat felt tight and he reached in the dusk for the grip of the samurai sword which hung girded at his side.
Near the high wall of shrubbery that marked the outer limits of the game preserve, or park, dedicated to the Sacred Prey, he had noticed once before a smaller building than most, and seeing the survivor garlanded with flowers he now suspected what it was; for the door of this small building was garlanded with similar flowers. Cautiously, Dane slipped up to one of the bamboo-slatted windows and peered in.
The spider-man sat hunched on the floor, looking solitary and dejected. He had been robed in long garments and was still hung about with garlands. Dane whistled softly, hoping to attract his attention. He had to repeat the sound twice before the spider-man tilted his head and looked around.
"Over here," Dane whispered hoarsely. "I'm a prisoner too. Come over by the window; I can't come in."
The spider-man heaved himself to his feet, moving with a quick, scuttling agility. He darted quick glances from side to side, and Dane, watching his fantastic alertness, thought, It would take some Hunter even to get near him! Maybe it isn't so surprising he survived....
His voice sounded rusty and hissing. "Who isss it? Who sssspoke there?"
Dane shrank against the shadows of the building. "I'm up against the Hunters tomorrow, friend. What are they like? What weapons do they carry?"
But before the question had more than left his mouth, he was seized in a firm grip from behind and jerked backward. He gripped at his sword, whipping it partway from the sheath.
His wrist was seized in a steel grip—quite literally; metal clamped over it, and Server's expressionless voice said, "It would be a pity to break your excellent blade. It is forbidden for the Prey to come here. Please permit us to escort you back to the feast, honored Prey; you are awaited there."
As Dane told Rianna and Dallith later, seated between them at one of the long tables while a whole conglomerate of robots—all exactly like Server, and each one of them answering each and every question or request just as if it had been he, individually, who had last spoken to the questioner—passed out the food, "I halfway expected they wouldn't let me get near the victor. There is something damn funny about these Hunters; damn funny."
"I find it the reverse of amusing," Aratak rumbled. Dane repeated his theory that the Servers were, in fact, the Hunters.
"In that case," Cliff-Climber said harshly, swiveling his head toward them, "I'm with you, and I remain with you throughout the Hunt! I sold myself to the Hunt, willing to meet in combat any creature of flesh and blood! But I did not volunteer to fight nothing-men who hide behind shielding of metal!"
That's another thought, Dane's mind jumped quickly. Maybe they're giant amoebas or something hiding behind all that metal; maybe they're not robots at all. I never thought of that. But at least it had Cliff-Climber with them again.
He looked around, wondering if—as in the Armory—Hunters mingled with Prey. It was hard to tell; the feasting hall was not well lighted.
"Almost," Dallith said, "as if they didn't want us to get too good a look at out fellow Prey."
"Or as if they're afraid we'd gang up on them," Rianna ventured. "I wonder if it's ever happened before and they don't want to take any more chances."
He did see what looked like one or two Mekhars; an enormous ursine creature with a hairy and shaggy pelt; if there were any proto-saurians of Aratak's type they were hidden in the darkness. Again, humans of his own general type—man almost as he might appear on Earth—outnumbered all other races almost two to one. They were badly illuminated, and located at some distance—while the five of them had been seated all at one table—but he noticed that their general types ranged from enormous and fair-skinned to huge and Negroid, while there were a few ethnic stocks he did not recognize as having any counterpart on Earth: two tall thin men with red skins, not the reddish-brown of the American Indian, but the very color of sunburn; a tiny creature with bluish-gray skin and long white fluffy hair, whose very sex was indeterminate. They bore all kinds of weapons he had ever heard of and some he hadn't.
The food was incredibly good, and there was a very great deal of it. Dane ate well, although not stuffing himself; he didn't know what arrangements had been made for feeding them during the Hunt, nor where his next square meal would come from, but on the other hand he didn't want to be overstuffed and drowsy when it began, which looked as if it might be fairly soon. He encouraged the others to do the same.
They had reached the end of the meal—apparently celebrated with something like a sweet soup and piles of fruits, nuts, and various confections—when one of the various incarnations of Server trundled into the center of the banquet hall and led in the garlanded and robed spider-thing.
"Give honor to the Masters of the Hunt!" Server proclaimed, and for once the metallic voice seemed to quiver with something like emotion.
Dane said nothing. Did they expect him to applaud? The other prisoners—Sacred Prey—around the hall evidently reacted with much the same attitude, for although there was a slight stir and rustle all around, there was no particular reaction.
"Give honor to the Hunters! In the nine-hundred-and-sixty-fourth Hunt in our illustrious history, forty-seven individuals hunted gallantly from Eclipse to Eclipse and nineteen have gone to join their illustrious ancestors!"
"I'd like to applaud to that," Rianna whispered fiercely.
Dane held her hand. "The point would probably be missed anyhow."
"Give honor to the Sacred Prey! Seventy-four fought us valiantly and provided us with a splendid Hunt, and for the three-hundred-and-ninety-eighth time, there was at least one survivor, who has been brought here so that you may see the rewards which await a successful Prey!"
The spider-man came forward. He still looked awkward in his long sagging garlands, and his figure was stooped and apprehensive.
How the hell did THAT survive all this? Dane's mind picked at the statistics; seventy-four fought valiantly (and there may have been a few who didn't); one survived. There were forty-seven Hunters; roughly two to a Hunter. And there's one survivor. What kind of creatures are they anyhow?
He paid little attention as the Servers loaded down the spider-thing with gems and precious metals and stated that he would be taken off by a Mekhar ship under bond to deliver him wherever, within a hundred light-years, he chose to go.
Rianna said grimly, "That would put him well within the Unity. I happen to know what planet he comes from."
Dallith murmured, "That means—if we live—I can return to my own world...."
She was trembling with emotion; Dane clasped her hand. It was long odds and a big if, but the incentive was there. She could go home... so could Rianna, Aratak, and Cliff-Climber.
Could he? Did he even want to?
He set aside the thought. It was a long road and the way home, if there was one, lay past the Hunt... past the Hunt, and the Eclipse, and the Red Moon.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The multitude of Servers had prepared Dane for a high level of technology; therefore he was prepared, as they went out into the night, for the small ship which stood waiting for them, to take them aboard. In any case, even Earth's moon had been reached long ago. However, this moon was evidently no airless hulk, but a planet capable of sustaining the lives of these assorted Prey.
He never saw who was at the controls of the little ship. But he had a strong impression that it was Server—or one of him. He sat between Dallith and Rianna, holding a hand of each, but they didn
't talk. It was either too late or too early for that. He tried, at least partly for Dallith's sake, to keep his thoughts calm and confident; she'd pick up his attitude. On the other hand there was no sense in pretending a complete calm he didn't feel; she'd know it was phony.
Aratak put his thoughts into words, as he had a habit of doing sometimes.
"The man who feels fear without cause is a fool; but the man is twice a fool who does not feel fear when there is cause."
"That may all be true," Cliff-Climber muttered, "but to speak of fear often gives it form and substance."
Rianna said wryly, "Looks like this one has plenty of form and substance already."
Dane wondered if the Hunters were on this ship; he looked inquiringly at Dallith but she shook her head. "I don't feel anything one way or the other. But then—so many alien presences and most of them hostile to us; it would be hard to tell."
Dane looked around the semi-darkened cabin, wondering a little grimly if these were all prisoners or if some of them, mingled among them, were the Hunters, observing the Prey at close quarters; but he did not like to mention the thought again.
It seemed a long time of waiting—although he supposed it was not more than an hour—before the view-screen flared to life with a picture of the Red Moon, growing and growing and apparently hurtling straight at them. About the same time the speaker at the front of the cabin made a few metallic, premonitory rasping noises. Dallith grasped Dane's hand, painfully hard, in the darkness.
"Honorable and Sacred Prey." The voice was not unlike that of the Servers, but somehow held a different quality... the original, perhaps, from which the voice of the Servers had been designed? Dane felt a queer atavistic stirring and knew that the hair along his arms was bristling; Cliff-Climber jerked alert, his whiskers and the elaborately curled topknot he had brushed up for the feast jutting up spikily.
"Honorable and Sacred Prey, we welcome you to the nine-hundred-and-sixty-fifth cycle of hunting of this recorded era," the strange voice said. "Very soon now you will be released upon the Hunting Grounds which have been, since the very beginning of recorded time, sacred to our Hunt. You will have the period of time until the dawn to scatter and find for yourselves the most advantageous stance; you have our word, which has not been broken for seven hundred and thirteen cycles of the Hunt, that you will not be pursued until the sun stands completely clear of the horizon."
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