by Andre Norton
Ashe spoke to Renfry across the chief’s shoulder. “Any chance of working these into spears?”
“Given time—and tools—maybe.” But the technician did not sound too certain.
Last of all Ashe displayed the spool, and for the first time the chief became animated. He took it into his own hands and hummed to one of the guards who went off at a trot. He tapped one finger on the red tape and then spread out all the digits several times, ending with a wide inclusive sweep of one arm.
“What’s he trying to tell us, Ashe?” Renfry had been watching the performance closely.
“I think he means that this is only one of many. We may have made a real discovery.”
The guard came back followed by a smaller, younger edition of himself. Taller than the children, the newcomer was apparently an adolescent. He saluted the chief with a clap of his wings and stood waiting until his leader held out the spool. Then, reaching out, the chief caught at Ashe’s hand and put the youngster’s in it—waving them off together.
“You going?” Ross wanted to know.
“I will. I think they want to show us where this came from. Renfry, you had better come too. You might be able to recognize a technical record better than I could.”
When they were gone, the chief and his retinue after them, Ross looked about him with dissatisfaction written plain on his face.
“There’s nothing worth grubbing for here.”
Travis had picked up a length of the tubing, to examine it in the full light of the window. The section was four feet or so long and showed no signs of erosion or time damage. The alloy was light and smooth, and what its original use had been he did not know. But as he ran it back and forth through his hands an idea was born.
The winged men needed better weapons than the spears. And to make such weapons from the odds and ends of metals they had found in this litter required forging methods perhaps none of the visitors, not even Renfry, had the skill to teach. But there was one arm which could be made—and perhaps even the ammunition for it might also exist in the unclassified masses on the floor. It was not a weapon his own people had used, but to the south others of his race had developed it into a deadly and accurate arm.
“What’s so special about that tube?” Ross asked.
“It might be special—for these people.” Travis held it up, put one end experimentally to his lips. Yes, it was light enough to be used as he planned.
“In what way?”
“Didn’t you ever hear of blowguns?”
“What?”
“The main part is a tube such as this—they’re used mostly by South American Indians. A small splinter arrow is blown through and they are supposed to be accurate and deadly. Sometimes poisoned arrows are used. But the ordinary kind would do if you hit a vital point, say one of those weasel’s eyes—or its throat.”
“You begin to make sense, fella.” Ross hunted for a section of pipe to match Travis’. “You plan to give these purple people a better way to kill red weasels. Can you make one to really work?”
“We can always try.” Travis turned to the clustering children and gestured, getting across the idea that such sections of pipe were now of importance. The junior assistants scattered with excited hums as if he had loosed a swarm of busy bees in the room.
As Travis had hoped, he was also able to discover the necessary material for arrows there. Again their original use was unknown; but at the end of a half hour’s search he had a handful of needle-slim slivers of the same light alloy as the pipes themselves. Since he had never built or used a blowgun and knew the principles of the weapon only through reading, he looked forward to a period of trial and error. But at last they gleaned from the room a wealth of raw materials for experiment. And they had not yet done when the youngster who had guided Ashe came back, to pull at Ross’s sleeve and beckon the men to follow.
They wound from one ramp to another, passing the point where the weasels had breached. But they did not leave the tower. Instead their guide went to the back of the entrance hall, putting both hands to a seemingly blank wall and pushing. Travis and Ross, watching his effort, joined their strength to his and a panel slipped back into the wall.
Before them was not a room, but a more sharply inclined ramp descending into a well of shadow which increased in darkness until its foot could not be seen from their present stand. The winged boy took the downward path at a run. His wings expanded until they balanced his body and he skimmed at a speed neither of the humans was reckless enough to try to match.
Once they reached the foot of the descent, they saw in the distance the smoky gleam of a native torch. And, guided by that, they ran along a narrow corridor where dust rose in puffs under their pounding feet.
The room of plunder in the tower above had housed unsorted heaps of bits and pieces. The place they now entered, where Ashe awaited them, was a monument to the precision and efficiency of the same race—or a kindred people—who had flown the ship.
Here were machines, banks of controls, dim, dark screens. And as the humans slowly advanced, the torch displayed racks and racks of containers, not only of record tapes, but of journey disks. Hundreds, thousands of those button spools which had brought them across space, were racked in cylinders with transparent tops and unknown symbols of the other people on their labels.
“Port control center—we think.” Ashe may have temporized by adding those last two words, but there was a certainty in his tone which suggested he was sure. Renfry was filling the front of his suit with samples taken from both record containers and tape racks.
“Library . . .” Travis added an identification of his own.
Ashe nodded. “If we only knew what to take! Lord, maybe everything we want, we need—not only for now but for the whole future—is right here!”
Ross went to the nearest rack, began to follow Renfry’s example.
“We can try to run these on the reader in the ship. And if we take enough of them, the odds are at least one or two should be helpful.”
His logical approach to the problem was the sensible one. They went about the selection as methodically as they could, lifting samples from each rack of holders.
“A whole galaxy of knowledge must be stored here,” Ashe marveled, as his fingers flicked one coil after another free.
They left at last, the fronts of their flexible suits bulging, their hands full. But before they left the tower, Travis also gathered up the lengths of pipe and the needle slivers. And when they were back in the ship, the reader set up, their plundered record rolls ready to feed, the Apache went to work on fashioning the weapon he hoped to offer to the winged people in return for their sharing of the stored wisdom.
Renfry, an array of small tools from the crew lockers aligned before him, was operating on one of the route disks. He pried off its cover and carefully unwound the thin wire spiral curled within. Twice he was doomed to disappointment, that fragile thread upon which a ship could cruise to the stars, snapped brittlely under his most careful handling. The second time that happened he looked up, his face drawn, his eyes red with strain.
“I don’t think it can be done.”
“There’s this.” Ashe reached for one of the waiting disk tapes. “Those you are working with are old. The one in the ship is new.”
There it was again, the jog in time which might return them to their own world—or might not. But that reminder appeared to encourage Renfry. He checked the outside of his disks, pushing aside any which showed the pitting of years. His next choice did not look too different from the one which held their future locked into its spiral. For the third time he pried delicately to force off the case.
But it was not to be that night that they learned anything which was of value to them. The record tapes in the reader gave only a series of pictures, fascinating in themselves, but of no value now. And in addition there were others which merely flashed symbols—perhaps formulas, perhaps written accounts. At last Ashe snapped off the machine.
�
�We can’t expect to be lucky all the time.”
“There’re thousands of those things stored in that place,” Ross pointed out. “If we do find anything useful—it will have to be by luck!”
“Well, luck is what we have to count on in our game.” Ashe’s voice was tired, drained. He moved slowly, rubbing his hands across his eyes. “When you give up a belief in luck, you’re licked!”
16
Travis set the mouthpiece of a blowgun to his lips and puffed. A thin, shining sliver, tipped with a fleecy tuft, sped—to hit on his improvised target of a red-veined leaf and pin it more securely to the trunk of a fern tree ten feet away. He was absurdly pleased with the success of his trial shot. He moved back another four feet and prepared for a second test. All the while the low humming of his enthralled native audience buzzed bee-fashion across the clearing.
When he was able to place a second dart almost beside the first, his satisfaction was close to complete. With a crooked finger Travis beckoned to the winged youth who had helped to carry the newly manufactured weapons to the testing ground. He handed over the tube he had just used, picking up a second, slightly longer, from the selection on the ground.
The young warrior laid his spear on the leaf mold, hooking his clawed toes over its shaft while he fumbled with the blowgun. Raising the weapon to his mouth, he gave a vigorous puff. Not as centered as Travis’ shot had been, the sliver hit the tree slightly above the leaf. Two other natives, their wings unfolding slightly as they ran, hurried to inspect the target, and Travis, smiling and nodding, brought his hands together in a sharp clap of approval.
They needed no more urging to try this new weapon. Tubes were snatched, passed from hand to hand, with some squabbling on the outer fringes of the gathering. Then each took his turn to try shooting, with varying degrees of success. They halted from time to time to pick the target clean of ammunition, or put up another leaf over the tattered remnants of the last.
Several of Travis’ pupils had sharpshooters’ eyes, and the Apache believed that with practice they could far surpass his own efforts. When the midday sun bit down on the range, he left the blowguns with the enthusiastic marksmen and went to hunt up his crew mates.
Renfry was still buried in his study of journey tapes and the ship’s circuits. But when Travis climbed to the control cabin he found Ashe there also. The reader was set up on the floor, and both of them were squatting before it, alternately watching some recording and making attacks on the main panel of the pilot’s unit. The case of that had been removed, exposing an intricate wiring pattern. And from time to time Renfry traced one of those threads up or down and either beamed or frowned at the results of his investigation.
“What’s going on?”
Ashe answered Travis. “We may have had our break! This record is a manual of sorts. It provides some wiring blueprints Renfry has been able to identify with that cat’s cradle of cords up there.”
“Some wiring.” Renfry’s enthusiasm did not match Ashe’s at that moment. “About one line in ten! This is like trying to put together a missile head when all your working instructions are written in Chinese code! Yeah—the red cord hits the plate there—but does it say anything about these white loop-de-loops to the left?”
Ashe squinted at the loops in question and consulted the record reader again. “Yes!” Renfry was down on his knees in an instant to see for himself the diagram on the picture screen.
“Anybody home?” Ross’s voice floated up the well of the interior ladder, and Travis could feel the vibration of his footfalls on the rungs as he climbed.
His head and shoulders emerged from the stairwell. His dust-streaked face testified to his occupation of the morning as the investigator on duty in the crazy treasure house at the winged people’s tower.
“Any luck?” Travis asked with some sympathy. Ross shrugged.
“A handful of stuff they may be able to use. I’m no big brain to string together some wire, nails and a couple of pieces of tin and produce a jet all set to fly. Saw your William Tells busy with those spitters of theirs. One of them had already bagged an addition to the dinner pot—not that the dear departed looked too edible. I don’t care for things with about four dozen legs all clawing at once. But I could relish some more civilized food right now.”
Travis glanced at Ashe and the dedicated Renfry. “If we have any today, looks as if you and I are elected to get it ready. They’ve discovered a record which shows the inside of the control board.”
“Well—that’s more like it!” Ross climbed the rest of the way into the cabin and stooped to look over Ashe’s shoulder at the miniature screen. “I’d say it’s closer to the plans for a demon-inspired highway system,” he commented judiciously. “And I’ll settle for a can of stew.”
Renfry and Ashe were pried away and they ate in the absent-minded fashion of men whose complete interest was centered elsewhere. When they had gone, Ross stretched and gazed at Travis.
“Care for a little look-see of our own?” he asked with a casualness which aroused Travis’ suspicion.
“In what direction?”
“That funnel place. Remember—the front hall is packed as if the boys living there had been in a hurry to move out, but had to leave their baggage behind? I’d like to have a good look at the baggage.”
“If I remember rightly, there is also a good stout grill over the doorway,” Travis reminded him.
“And I have a way to get around that. Come on.”
Ross’s way of passing the secured door was simple enough. One of the natives flew to a second-story window equipped with a coil of climbing cord from the ship. He confronted a shutter across the window. But prying with his spear point forced the latch on that, and a few moments later the rope dangled down the side of the building in open invitation to climb.
The gallery into which they so forced a way gave many indications it had been hurriedly stripped. Some ragged tatters of flimsy web, which fell to powder at the touch of a finger, still hung on the walls. And there were pieces of oddly shaped furniture shrouded in dust. But the dust on the floor was marked in places by tracks and, seeing those, their native companion fingered his spear. Then, his eyes on the humans holding their attention, he drove it point down into the pattern of that trail with the vigor of one making a determined attack upon an enemy.
Another lair of the weasel things? Travis, studying those tracks in the half gloom beyond the light from the opened window, believed not. In fact, the marks were disturbingly like a human footprint. And the teasing picture provided by his imagination of some one of the old lords of this place lingering on to haunt its solitude, grew disturbingly in the back of his mind.
Here for the first time they found a stairway, though its treads were so narrow and steep as to make the humans believe that it had been built to accommodate bodies unlike their own. Ross, taking the lead, went down, his explorer’s zeal well tempered with caution, in search of the crowded hall they had seen from without.
Travis sniffed. There was a faint fetid odor, not just the accumulated dust of centuries, leaf mold borne in by the wind, or the taint of some small animal lair. This was not only strong enough to be recent, but the stench was also vaguely familiar.
Warning of a weasel den? He did not think so. This was not quite so rank and compelling as the stench of the red-walled structure those beasts had taken for their own. And it was not the alien but inoffensive odor which clung to the winged people’s quarters.
He noted that the nose flap of their native companion expanded, and the deep-set eyes in that lavender face glittered as they turned alertly from side to side. Not for the first time the Apache regretted the absence of a quick common form of communication. It had proved impossible for the humans to approximate the humming sounds which made up the natives’ speech. And none of them in return appeared able to utter any recognizable word, in spite of all the coaxing and patient repetition of common nouns or action verbs.
The interior of the building was
gloomy, though the hall into which they had descended received a greater measure of light from the door. Ross stepped out, skirting a pile of boxes. He laid his hand on the top one, his other hovering over the grip of his weapon.
Travis remained where he was. That smell—it tugged at his memory. They stood still, the winged youth freezing with them. Then a sudden gust of wind through the latticed doorway brought with it a warm, fresh reek and Travis knew—
“The sand people!” His words were a hiss of whisper but they carried the authority of a shout. What were the nocturnal creatures of the shrouded desert world doing here?
“You are sure?” To his surprise Ross questioned his identification no further than that.
“You don’t forget a stink like that in a hurry.” Travis’ eyes were busy, surveying the pools of shadow about the crates and boxes piled in the hallway. Had anything moved out there? Were they being watched now by eyes which could see farther than their own in this dusk?
The hand of the native touched his arm, an appeal for attention. Travis’ head swung slowly as he saw the other ready a spear. He fitted a dart in his blowgun.
“There is something—to the left.” Ross’s whisper was the thinnest trickle of sound. His blaster was pointed at that shadowy corner.
Then the hall came alive, a boiling up of forms from every likely and concealing cover. The attacking things shambled swiftly on four limbs like animals. Their silent advance carried with it an added horror in the fact that those slavering beasts—or their remote ancestors had once been—men!
A blast from Ross’s weapon brought down three of the clumsy runners. A tentacle licked out and then a fourth attacker went down, a dart dancing in its hairy throat. Behind Travis the native ran back a few steps up stairs, launched out into the air with a beat of his wings. Wheeling over the enemy, he stabbed at the boneless middle limbs raised to drag him down with a concentration which hinted at a long enmity between the two species.