"I'm sticking to something you chickened out on, Danny," said Ogden Hapgood accusingly. "I'm following orders and still playing it by the book."
"You'd better look behind the book, old buddy." Danny remembered something Boozie had told him. "Stop being a tree and look at the forest," he repeated. "I'm supporting the mission we were sent on. You boys had better figure out where your heads are."
Danny was watching Vinet who stood next to Hapgood. The young spaceman was a valuable instrument man and cartographer. He could read his wide-eyed expression as he looked at the freed captives, now happily burdened down with heavy weapons and ammo. Nor was he missing the crossbows carried by the Talavat scouts, or the lean-hipped lancers on their nervous, well-trained mounts. It was common knowledge that Ravano's beefed-up forces numbered in the tens of thousands.
"You wanted to say something, Billy?"
Bill Vinet slowly grinned. "Yeah, maybe. I'm thinking there's a hell of a lot more room out here than there is on Adolf's funny farm." He stepped forward and the freed captives cheered.
Danny had plans for this new recruit, based on something Kenny Makart had suggested. Among other things he knew terrestrial navigation regardless of alien constellations, and he could make compasses out of lodestones if he had to. Foxy was going to get a new hand in the boatyards down on the delta.
The last phase of the rescue plan involved rapid dispersement. Danny and Axel had taken over two of the lancer's mounts and were bare-backing Sam and Lalille into the wilderness as fast as they could go. As Danny leaned forward against the girl's slender body and clutched the nyanyo's flyingmane, his face was against her flushed cheek, and her blond hair whipped into his eyes occasionally. Even under the strain and commotion of their flight he could have spoken into her ear to give her encouragement, but he remained silent, biding his time. Perhaps she wasn't ready for the startling secret he had planned to reveal to her.
She had looked pale, frightened and lost when he pulled her out of the rover. When she finally saw the ripped and bloodied carcasses of the Golaks and some of the Talavats sprawled on the red earth as far as she could see up the road, she had hidden her face against the swami's shoulder. Her ordeal during the inquisition had apparently shaken her to a point of emotional crisis. He could feel her trembling like a child and it awakened his sympathy for her. He held her tightly, deliberately giving her the strength of his arms.
The Lily had given astrological readings to others during the long star trip, but she had never revealed her own analysis. Noley and Sam had gradually filled him in on that.
"Pisces with Sagittarius rising," the Monk had told him and Boozie one day. He had described her impressionability and her clinging need for security, her vague and restless aspirations. The languages were a part of her search for far horizons where there were perhaps other rainbows.
"But she's an advanced Pisces," Sam said later. "Neptune rules those hidden depths, bringing shifting currents and hidden storms to her psyche. She's an emerging type." He failed to explain what he meant but he had emphasized one thing. "For her there has to be a God."
That had been behind the issues of Sam's persecution. She had seen behind the Bishop's falsifications and had made a tearful defense of the swami, according to Boozie's stormy report. Suddenly in the uncertainty of the uprising she had run with Sam. Impressionability? Confused search for security? Restless aspirations? She was obviously without convictions yet, probably wondering what she had gotten into. He knew that just now she was adrift in her "shifting currents and hidden storms," a karmic Cinderella.
A distant droning sound impinged on his thoughts of the girl who was clutched so close to his chest.
"Danny!" boomed Bjornson's voice behind him. "Hit the river!"
They had been heading for this particular unmapped river all along. From the cries of the lancers ahead, he knew they were almost there.
"What's happening?" asked Lalille tremulously. She suddenly heard the roaring gyro engines above them and tried to turn. "The scoutship!" she exclaimed, terrified.
He held her more tightly. "Relax, blondie. We've been expecting it."
"But they have infrared scanners and gas bombs!"
In the next moment, he plunged with her and their mount into the cool, dark waters of a narrow but placid stream. There was a stormy spray of water as bodies splashed in all around them. Soon the shaded river was dotted with heads looking up, humans and unicorns alike. Above them the upper terraces of the jungle formed a heavy canopy. They could just touch the streambed and keep their heads above water, but Danny held her in his arms to give her assurance. She was wearing her green golden caftah, which was soaked against her body, reminding him of Jerry's description of the forest nymph – a childlike innocence of undine beauty.
"Cool water plays hell with infrared scanners," he told her with a forced grin. The grin was a mask to cover his own uncertainty as the cumbersome scout ship hovered and blatted and drifted about, not five-hundred feet above the tops of the trees.
The waiting lasted a while as the big convertiplane scouted the general area and crossed over the river several times. The biggest task was to keep the triple-horned nyanyos in the water. When not distracted by this activity, the Talavats returned to their haunting, high-sung mantra chants, attempting to placate Ramor for the lives they had sent this day onto the sunset journey.
When the emergency passed and only the excited screeching of the birds and sloth-like khaitabus could be heard overhead they all came up on the fern-lined shore to collect themselves. The ninety-degree temperature of the tropical morning kept them from feeling any chill from their immersion. The rescue mission had been accomplished.
"Where do we go from here?" asked Burt Henshaw, one of the new defectors. Wet and hairy and needing a shave, the stocky machinist wore a small boy's expression of wide-eyed expectancy.
Bill Vinet and the other recruits gathered around as Danny turned Lalille over to Sam. The lancers were organizing their mounts again.
"It's a far piece," said Danny. "We're making a rendezvous here with the scouts and some pack animals. I suggest we rest and eat before we go on."
"But where are we going?" persisted Henshaw.
"To the red-ridge caves."
Vinet appeared to pale slightly. "Hey, that's Rak country!"
He was referring to the dangerous cyclopes.
"Not at present. You'll find out. Where else could Ravano move his headquarters underground?" He smiled at the swami. "You'll be interested to know that we finally found the lost temple of the Lahas, Sam." He avoided looking at Lalille when he added: "Or rather, somebody found it for us."
He saw her blue eyes widen at this, but she seemed too weary and unsettled to make any comment. The swami also remained silent. His dark-brown eyes glanced at the men around him. Apparently he wanted very much to say something, but he preferred to wait for an opportunity to speak in private about the matter.
This was a new Sam that Danny hadn't seen before. By all indications, he had been liberated from more than an execution. He had gained some weight, but his extra stature seemed to be due to a new projection of personality. His look and his voice had lost their former gentility. The effect was one of dynamic purpose. Intuitively, Danny sensed even more but said nothing about it. Behind the holy man's facade of ageless wisdom loomed an awakened power. It made him think of Noley's reference to a fifth kingdom, beyond the human stage "something we don't talk about."
* * * *
After the pack train arrived and the camp settled down to eating and resting, Danny found it impossible to ward off questions from the new recruits. Therefore, he used the time to brief them on the general situation. Ravano's forces had been trained and equipped as planned. Also as promised, Foxy and some of the original defectors were working on the fleet. With a combination of ingenuity and smuggled tools they had rigged up a crude sawmill. Down on the delta they had set up a boatyard under a canopy of flowering lianas and other tropical foliage wh
ere their machine rifles had taught the Golaks to leave them alone. Talavat labor had helped them to put in an earth dam so that they could drive their main ripsaw with a giant water wheel, using a combination of wooden gearboxes and drive belts.
The boat designs were far from elaborate. Foxy had been using heavy timbers for keels but couldn't refine his milling operation enough to produce much planking. Instead, the hulls were pole-ribbed and wrapped with a combination of skins and gum-treated fiber cloth. The latter was something he had taught the native women how to weave, using long fibers from the inhudesi forests, a name given to dense growths of thirty-foot cane-like trees in the swamp country. Such fiber mattings were also used for sails. Within the first year, two prototype vessels rigged with lateen sails had made the trip to the northern mainland.
Since then, fifteen ships had been built which were capable of carrying a hundred people each, including women, children and crewmen. The vessels had been making round trips for more than a year now and had transported close to ten thousand emigrants to the mainland. Some boats had failed to weather ocean storms and had sunk. A few others had been spotted by the scoutship and had been ruthlessly destroyed. The Talavats had since learned to slip out on the night tides and be far at sea by dawn. Currently, ten of the remaining vessels were en route back to the island continent of Lankara to take part in a major maneuver. This was based on the fact that Foxy's crew, using an army of native workers, was completing fifteen more ships.
That would complete the promised fleet and make it possible to begin the final cycle of evacuation.
But there was the main bone of contention. A conflict of philosophies had developed between Ravano and the insurgents. The revolutionaries, now led by Danny, were concerned with one main objective: to rescue Terra Nova from the secessionists and reestablish the mission of the star quest. One way or another, the Sirius III would have to eventually challenge the Barrier Wall and attempt to reach the Earth. To do this, and the time for it was becoming critical, Ravano would have to meet his part of the bargain. Before thousands of strobed and drugged Golaks could be armed with single-action rifles, the upgraded forces of Ravano would have to join the insurgents in a decisive attack on the colony base. What blocked this action was the Talavat religion. This obstacle had become more problematical than ever now that the evacuation fleet was nearing completion.
Danny went into the native religious background, at which point Lalille and Sam became his most attentive listeners. Both of them knew the laws of the Lahas from the temple inscriptions and their extensive talks with Ravano and Akala, but they were concerned with how much this would affect the insurgent plans. The main hurdle was the prophecy, which was more often referred to as the Oracle.
The Talavat shamans were known as the Krias. They were a special caste of priests who maintained a closed mystical order and whose laws and rituals had descended to them from the "Great Ones." On rare occasions, sometimes separated by hundreds of years, the Krias had achieved a peculiar state of group Revelation which was called an Oracle.
"That state," said Sam knowledgeably, "is known in eastern philosophy as kryasakti. It is a strange parallel that the priests refer to themselves as Krias. Incidently, kryasakti is a limited form of the collective consciousness in nature, similar also to the lost faculty of the Moats."
As Lalille and the swami knew, several generations ago an Oracle had occurred. It was this prophecy which had warned of cataclysm and established the crisis related to the emigration problem. It was the belief of the Talavats that the fire gods of the mountains were growing angry, that the day was nearing when the volcanoes would fully erupt and destroy Lankara. The prophecy had also referred to the advent of the Star Sons in their Maitluccan or Sky Dragon, and it had intimated that the Star Sons would save them from destruction.
However, several things had gone wrong. One of these was the loss of their symbiotic relationship with the Moats, whom they regarded as sacred beings. The strange rapport of ages had been disrupted by the coming of the Star Sons. This and the Rak attacks had been considered to be an evil omen, but the crisis of Ravano's captivity and the violent earthquake had caused the monarch to accept Danny's proposition concerning the ships.
"What more does he want?" asked Henshaw at this point. "We're filling our part of the bargain, aren't we?"
"It's not such a bargain for the Talavats," Danny explained. "The laws of the Lahas condemn war. Self defense is something else, but now that Ravano sees his whole fleet taking shape he takes a very dim view about waging a major war against Terra Nova. As for the few Talavat slaves, philosophy covers that. The slaves themselves know they are expendable."
"Seems to me he's a welsher," said Billy Vinet.
"Not exactly. You saw his troops in action today, although they prayed to be forgiven. Small forays, delaying actions, rescue runs to obtain more help and weapons – all these things are aimed at gaining time for the fleet completion. But there are two other stumbling blocks."
He went on to explain that Ravano had one major argument with regard to the Oracle. The king had conceded that he might see himself obligated, even by Ramor, to fulfill his arms pact and attack the colony base, except for one thing: the prophecy was incomplete in its fulfillment.
"The Oracle made mention of a star. The advent of Mait-luccan, the Sky Dragon, was to have been marked by the appearance of a new star in the heavens. So far, no star. Therefore, he sees that as a warning."
"Or a damn good excuse!" retorted Axel heatedly. "That's the way I see it."
"You said there were two stumbling blocks," the swami reminded him.
"That one's also tied to their religion," Danny answered. "Now they're waiting for another Oracle."
Groans of complaint were heard from some of the new men, but Sam persisted.
"Do they have any reason to expect one?"
"According to them and Noley, yes." Danny smiled faintly. "The Mad Monk is practically next to Khyatri – that's the name of the head shaman. He and Akala and Khyatri are involved in some spooky ritual that they refer to as na-thitasu, 'the Call."'
Both Lalille and the swami seemed to tense at this.
"Danny," said Sam quickly, "I'll restate my question. Do they have any reason for performing the rites of na-thitasu?"
"Well ... according to Noley and Akala, some of the ancient inscriptions seem to promise a second Oracle."
"I knew it!" exclaimed Lalille. "It was the strange thing I sensed in the temple!"
Sam's dark eyes met Danny's gravely. His swarthy countenance was strangely animated. "That second Oracle may be the key for all of us. I predict the imminent return of the Lahas."
"What? You mean the Great Ones?"
"Yes. And this is why I have come."
One of the recruits, a wiry middle-aged Finn named Juhani Kivi, slapped his knee impatiently. "Well, I didn't come here for all this hocus-pocus! Are we going to fool with magic or are we going to move?"
"Yeah," said another man, "if this keeps up we'll have to attack the base ourselves"
"Hey, Danny!" called Henshaw. "What if Ravano doesn't deliver? What do we do then, just stand out here with egg on our faces?"
Danny assured Sam and Lalille with his eyes that he wasn't dismissing the swami's statement so lightly. He had seen many strange things among the Talavats and their Krias, and Sam's new aura of power had impressed him indefinably. To pacify the men, however, he stated a simple truth.
"Not at all, Burt. In that case there's a second plan. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. We're still riding with Plan One."
Later, after everybody had eaten, Danny had a chance to be alone with the bearded swami for a few minutes.
"You didn't say much about the lost temple of legend," said Sam. "How did you find it?"
He hesitated and made sure that Lalille was out of hearing range. "Jerry found it."
Sam's eyes widened abruptly. "Jerry Fontaine? Thank God! He's alive!"
"But evidently somebody's kee
ping it a secret at the base. They almost recaptured him. I want your advice. Do you think I should tell Lalille?"
The swami gazed pensively at the blond girl who sat alone by the river, perhaps looking into its depths at her own shifting currents. His concern was fatherly but shadowed by deeper thoughts. "First, you must tell me about him. How did he escape, and how did he survive alone in the jungles?"
"That, my friend, is a legend in itself."
CHAPTER XIII
Before the nine earthmen and the girl had finished their early lunch the Talavat warriors melted into the towering forest and started back to Ravano's hidden stronghold. Eight of the unicorn beasts had been left behind for Danny's group. Also, a dozen lancers had remained to function as sentinel outriders during the trek to the red-ridge country. The only dangers now were the normal kind – large predators of the jungle, hunting Golaks out of their territory, or a chance party of Raks. The small cadre of earthmen was fairly bristling with heavy weaponry and there seemed little to fear at the moment.
This time Bjornson grinningly took Lalille as his welcome passenger on one of the huskiest unicorns and Danny rode with the swami so that he could tell him the strange saga of Jerry's escape and survival. The holy man's chubbiness made it necessary for him to ride behind Danny and hold on to his work-hardened torso.
"I always believed Jerry had one foot stuck through a magic mirror," Danny mused as they rode along near the rear of the column. "There's a kind of unreality that keeps mixing him up the damnedest things."
I know," said Sam mysteriously. "Like alternating between parallel universes. In a psychic sense, this is where Lalille is."
"I mean, his present bio reads like a cross between Peer Gynt and Sindbad the Sailor, but a kind of jinx cloud follows him. No wonder he's a jungle hermit. He's been through a kind of hell that would drive most men mad."
Star Quest Page 16