No stars were visible through the heavy blanket of misty atmosphere which overlay this jungle planet; the absence of any means of marking the passage of time made the hours seem twice as long. Several times, ravening, catlike beasts essayed the climb to his perch, but only one came so close that Jamieson felt compelled to use his gun. When he did so, the thinness of its beam made his heart sink. But it worked, scorching the animal's forepaws and causing it to lose its grip. It fell, screaming and thrashing, to be fought over as a prize by the others below.
When at long last dawn came, it came slowly, and for some time Jamieson could not be sure the scene was actually lightening about him. The carnage had subsided below, and he could make out several of the hyenalike creatures encountered during his wild ride on the ezwal two days (only two days?) ago. They were feeding more or less quietly on the remains of an indeterminate number of dismembered carcasses. It had been the same the previous morning, but this time the sequel was different. For suddenly, silently, a huge head and forty feet of rounded body shot from the undergrowth like a massive javelin and struck the nearest scavenger, which shrieked once while being crushed to a pulp. The others scattered instantly and were gone.
The rest of the giant snake's body undulated leisurely from the tall grass, and it set about the business of swallowing its victim whole. The process took only a few minutes, but, afterward, the snake showed no disposition to move on. It lay there, while the bulge in its body elongated, gradually moving back and finally becoming almost unnoticeable. All this time Jamieson sat frozen in his perch, breathing as softly as possible. He had no extensive knowledge of the creature's hunting practices, but there seemed little doubt that it could pick him out of the treetop with ease, if it were to try.
After the longest hour of Jamieson's life, the snake stirred and slithered away. He waited a few minutes, then climbed down and followed in its clearly marked trail, moving as softly as possible and keeping a sharp lookout ahead. This would be the least likely quarter, he reasoned, from which the carrion-eaters would return to their feast, and he was counting on the snake not to double back or to stop very soon. After all, one animal was light fare for that colossal stomach, and the hunt must go on.
He was glad enough, however, to leave the trail after a few hundred yards and strike off in the approximate direction he had been traveling the day before. It was now full daylight, and the sun had probably risen, but it would not be visible until it was an hour or so high. That would be time enough to get his bearings and correct his course. In the meantime he would proceed in as straight a line as possible.
By noon he had penetrated considerably farther than on the previous day, due mainly to his improved physical condition. He allowed himself not more than an hour's rest and finished the last two miles by midafternoon. Weariness was settling heavily upon him now, but the thought of spending another endless night with a badly depleted weapon for protection spurred him to begin his circling search for the raft while a few hours of daylight remained.
There was a tall tree about fifty yards from where he stood, and he studied its structure intently for a minute, so that he would be able to recognize it from any angle. It would be his center point. His first circle would be at this distance, the second would be fifty yards farther out and so forth. This pattern would give him an excellent chance of spotting a large, metallic object like the raft, although some of the more densely overgrown areas would demand closer inspection. First of all, of course, he would climb the tree and see what might be seen from its top.
Four hours later he was tottering with exhaustion, having nearly completed his fifth round. It was growing dark. The preliminary survey from the tree had revealed nothing, and soon he must head back to it for another grueling night of fitful sleep and waking nightmares.
The thought spurred him on, as it had several times already. At least he would complete this round, despite the increasing danger of prowling beasts. But he no longer hid from himself the dull realization that he had been foolishly optimistic about finding the raft. He had learned one thing from his bird's-eye view that afternoon: the land was narrowing into a peninsula only a few miles across at this point. But to cover such an area at all thoroughly might take weeks.
He stumbled ahead, making no effort at moving quietly,
actually little caring whether a final disaster ended this hopeless situation now or a few days from now.
The dense jungle fell away before him unexpectedly into a small clearing which had been invisible from the tree, only two hundred and fifty yards away. Even here, of course, the ground was not entirely bare but was thickly splotched toward the center with gray-colored creeping vines.
He had taken a few steps into the open when there was a movement of undergrowth on the far side, and a great shaggy beast with a fiery-eyed, maniacal face emerged to confront him, not fifty feet away. On sighting Jamieson, it growled hideously, opened its tusked jaws and broke into a full charge straight at him.
Jamieson froze, instinctively realizing the futility of attempting to run and waiting until the big animal gathered straight-line momentum before trying to dodge.
It never did. It had hardly got under way when its legs became tangled in the gray vines, and it fell heavily among them. Incredibly, despite struggles that shook the ground, it seemed unable to get free. The reason was not immediately apparent, in the gathering darkness, but as Jamieson stared in fascination, he began to see what was happening. The vinelike plant was alive —ferociously alive! Tough, whiplike tendrils were wrapping themselves about the beast's legs and neck faster than its mighty efforts could break them apart. And others, needle-tipped, were jabbing again and again through the matted hair into its flesh. All at once the great body stiffened with a jerk, its limbs extending tautly to an unnatural, reaching position and remaining so, motionless. The beast lay there as if turned to stone.
Now the vines slowed their frantic activity and began creeping up over the rigid carcass, spreading out and gradually obscuring it from view.
Jamieson shook himself, tore his gaze from the horrid spectacle and looked hastily about to make sure none of the vines were growing close to him. He had identified the plant by now, although this was the first time he had seen it or been aware of how it functioned. It was the carnivorous Rytt plant, which, together with the giant snake species, made this planet unsuitable as a military base. True, this creeping killer did not range the entire planet, like the snake, but occurred only where soil conditions were just right for its peculiar metabolism. In such areas it generally abounded, and Jamieson shuddered at the thought that he very possibly had passed fairly close to more than one patch of it during the last several hours.
He was suddenly alarmed to notice how dark it had become.
At the same time he became aware that the level of background noises which characterized this primeval world had increased ominously in the last few minutes. There was no such thing as a twilight hush here; rather, it was a time of evil awakening, the stirring of ravening monsters from innumerable foul hideaways, the beginning of a protracted crescendo of wanton slaughter.
He was in the act of turning toward the tree, whose tip was just visible against the dimming sky, when he felt an amazing yet familiar probing in his mind, and a clear thought imposed itself there. "Not that way, Trevor Jamieson; the other way. The raft you are seeking is in the next clearing, not very far from the one you are in. And so am I, waiting for you. Once again, it seems, I need your help."
Jamieson stood still, trembling with both excitement and uncertainty. He had last seen the ezwal at the mercy of the Rulls. Could this be a Rull trick, and was the ezwal perhaps working with them, after all? But why would they bother to try to lure him— "The Rulls who captured me are all dead," the ezwal cut in impatiently. "The lifeboat they landed in is also here, undamaged. I cannot operate it; therefore, I need your help. There are no beasts between you and it at the moment, so hurry!"
Jamieson turned eagerly and began to skirt the clearing,
his energy suddenly renewed. The sketchy information grudgingly imparted by the ezwal was beginning to make some sense. The Rull warship must have been forced to leave so hastily there had not been time to pick up the scouting party it had sent out. And the latter group, thinking they had an unintelligent animal in their custody, had allowed the ezwal the chance it needed to wipe them out, as Jamieson had thought they might. So now— "I did not kill them," came the ezwal's laconic thought. "It was not necessary. You will see in a moment what did."
Jamieson broke through a last fringe of spiked fernlike growth into a larger clearing. Along one side rested the hundred-foot, dark-metal Rull lifeboat, and on the other side lay the hard-sought raft, now rendered inconsequential by the turn of events. In between, amid gray splotches of Rytt plant, were the lifeless, wormlike forms of a dozen Rulls, strange-appearing even in this alien environment. The gray creepers grew in profusion near the open door of the lifeboat, some extending even across the threshold into the dark interior, as if searching in their blind, instinctive way for more victims.
Jamieson blinked and guessed what had happened.
"Your logical processes are admirable," interposed the ezwal sardonically, "although a trifle slow. Yes, I am in the control room of the ship, with a closed steel door between myself and the creeping vines. I suggest that you use your gun to clear a path through them immediately and get inside the ship yourself. There are several beasts quite close, and you obviously cannot depend on the killer plant to protect you again."
Jamieson made a quick decision and turned toward the raft fifty feet away, giving the gray vines a wide berth. The raft itself was in the clear, fortunately; he climbed upon it and slid a cover plate aside, exposing the rather simple control mechanism. From his weapon he removed a screw cap and dropped a small capsule into his palm. This was the heart of his weapon; he would be completely helpless until it could be replaced.
He lifted the lid of a boxlike lead compartment in the control chamber, placed the capsule in a tiny, oddly shaped holder within it and closed the lid. That was all. In ten minutes a breeder reaction, initiated by the comparatively few neutrons left in the capsule, would bring it up to full charge. But he did not intend to wait that long. Three minutes, approximately, would produce all the charge he had to have.
Jamieson squatted there in the near-darkness, ready to try if need be to snatch the all-important capsule and get it back into the gun in time to save his life. He was by no means sure this could be done, but there was no help for it. The whole ugly situation was now quite clear in his mind. And the mere fact that no denial had come from the ezwal tended to prove it.
While he waited, looking constantly into the black shadows about the clearing, he spoke aloud, softly, but with grim emphasis. "So the Rulls didn't know about the Rytt plant. That is not too surprising; it is one of the few such types in the known galaxy. But they must have blundered into it at night for it to have got them all. Is that how it happened, or were you still in a trance at the time, like the stupid animal they thought you were?"
The ezwal's response was swift and haughty. "I threw off the hypnosis before they had finished floating me into the ship on the antigravity plate they had me chained to. With all of them present and armed, I thought it best not to show them how easily I could break loose, so I pretended to remain unconscious while they locked me in the storage hold. Then I broke the chains. I was waiting to see whether they would leave the ship again when there was a noise like thunder, and they all went outside. I could tell nothing from their strange thoughts except that they were excited. All at once they got even more excited, and then after a minute or so the thoughts stopped quite suddenly. I could guess what had happened, but to make sure, I broke out of the storage hold and looked out the main hatch. It was very dark by then, but I can see quite well in the dark. They were all dead."
Jamieson was wishing he could see that well in the dark. He fancied he saw something moving in one of the darker corners of the clearing, but he could not be sure. The three minutes must be nearly up by now. He would wait no longer. Forcing his trembling hands to move methodically, he took a small pair of tongs from their clip beside the lead box, opened the lid and carefully extracted the capsule. He inserted it in the gun, replaced the screw cap and breathed a deep sigh of relief.
He looked about the clearing once more, then stared into the suspected corner; there was nothing definite to be seen there yet. Probably only his imagination. But he continued to watch alertly as he stepped down from the raft and walked slowly toward the ship.
Again he spoke softly. "You have told me all I need to know. I think I can tell the rest of the story myself. After you saw that the Rulls were dead, you decided to spend the night in the ship. You would not trust your magnificent eyesight to protect you against all possible outcroppings of the Rytt plant. That is the one thing on this planet you truly fear. Your first encounter with it must have been an interesting one. In addition to your amazing speed and strength, I surmise that you needed a certain amount of luck to escape. And you found that the farther up the peninsula you went, the thicker it grew. You funked out completely. You decided you needed me—me and my gun. So you came back."
The first patch of gray creepers showed a little lighter against the dark ground. Jamieson pointed the gun downward, placed his other hand over his eyes and pressed the stud. There was a crackling roar as the searing beam of energy struck the ground, and though he could not see the brilliance of the flame, there was no doubt that the gun was adequately charged. He swung it from side to side as he walked forward several steps, then stopped, releasing the stud. He looked around and found that he could still see fairly well. He was standing in a wide black swath, and the next patch of gray was twenty feet ahead. "You've been in that control room for two days, haven't you?" Jamieson went on. "It must have been a tight squeeze for you to get through the door. But you had to, because the main hatch operates by machinery which you don't understand and couldn't budge, for all your strength. The next morning when you opened the control-room door, you found the Rytt plant on the other side of it. I'll bet you closed it fast and threw all the clamps. That held back the plant, of course—its strength is not sufficiently concentrated to penetrate a hard metal door. It can clutch and stab you a hundred places at once, but it can't break down a steel door, as you can. So there you stayed."
The second patch of gray vines—a larger one—was dealt with like the first. Between Jamieson and the lifeboat now remained the largest, almost solid growth which enclosed the dead Rulls.
He talked on, in a quiet, edged tone. "For two days you have studied that control mechanism, trying to make sense out of it, and you have failed utterly. You must have reached the point where you were about to experiment blindly with the controls, no matter what happened. Then I showed up, and the situation changed. I am referring to my arrival in the vicinity, hours ago. You sensed that, of course. To you, it meant only a convenient alternative. You would continue to study the controls. If you couldn't figure them out before dark you would summon me, since I might not survive another night in my exhausted condition. But if you could possibly learn how to operate the ship, you would simply take off, leaving me here to die."
He paused and waited briefly, but there was still no response whatever from the ezwal, even to the final damning accusation. He was not surprised. The strange, proud creature in the ship must know full well that it could gain nothing by denial, and it was incapable of remorse.
Jamieson had now burned his way to within a few feet of the lifeboat's main hatch. Only those creepers which extended into the ship were left. He set the intensity of his gun a few notches lower, to avoid damage to the sealing material which lined the hatch. He then spoke what he hoped would be his final words to this particular ezwal. "I'm going to burn away the creepers all the way to your door. When I do, you are to come out of there and go to the storage hold, where you are to stay. To see that you do, I'm going to set up this blaster so that a photo
electric relay will make it sweep the passageway if you so much as set foot in it. If you stay put, you won't be harmed. It will take two weeks to reach the nearest base, and from there we can head for Carson's Planet, where I will be very glad to turn you loose. In the meantime, you may find something edible in the storage room, though I doubt it. You can console yourself with the thought that, without any previous knowledge of astrogation or hyper-drive, you would undoubtedly have starved to death before you could get home by yourself. In any case, you should still be alive by the time I see the last of you.
"You have lost in the attempt to keep ezwal intelligence a
secret from my government. But I shall have to report that in my opinion the average adult ezwal is just as impossible to reason with as if he were a dumb beast! And now you had better get your backside as far away from that door as you can. It's going to be hot in a minute!"
5
Two days out from Eristan II, Jamieson made a radio contact with a cruiser of a race friendly to man. He explained his situation and asked that the ship let him use its powerful transmitters as a relay for him to contact the nearest Earth base. This was done.
But a week passed before an Earth battleship took aboard the Rull lifeboat and agreed to transport Jamieson and the ezwal to Carson's Planet. The commander of the battleship knew nothing of the ezwal situation. He merely verified Jamieson's identification of himself and accepted that he was an authorized personnel for ezwals.
When they arrived at Carson's Planet, Jamieson received permission from the base commander to have the battleship land in an area which was uninhabited by human beings. There he had his final conversation with the ezwal.
It was a beautiful setting. Rolling hills stretched into the northern reaches. To the west was a green forest, and in the valley to the south, the sparkle of a great river. Carson's Planet was a world of green abundance and water in plenty.
War Against the Rull Page 4