No, there was only one way to make the People safe—if it would work. And he'd got to take it. Because this was his own fault for not telling Doc. J. sooner. He'd acted like a silly kid, wanting to keep his secret to himself just a little longer. Well, now he was not going to act like a silly kid. He was going to put things right, if he could—lighter than they were before. With any luck it would be hours before anyone missed him. He might even be able to do what he wanted and call back on his transmitter to explain before they found that he had gone.
Ricky was already out of the clearing before Jordan, who had started out with Woodman, turned back to speak to Dr. Scott.
"Ellen, I've left Ricky in his cabin. We had a… disagreement. I think he's better left to himself just now, but would you mind going to his cabin in an hour or so, to see that he's all right?"
"Of course, John. But what—?"
"No time now. I'll explain later. Thank you, Ellen. Good-by."
There was no undergrowth in the forest but the branches were extremely thick and the darkness beneath them almost complete. Jordan, following Woodman through the trees at the slow pace enforced by these conditions, felt his anger drain away and a deep depression take its place. What sort of showing had he made, either as a father or as the head of the expedition? This particular episode was quite idiotic. There was nothing in Woodman's report to call for this immediate dash into the forest. He should at least have stopped to find out what Ricky knew about it—and now that he was cooling off, Ricky's anxiety seemed more and more puzzling. If it weren't that to turn back would make him look even more of a fool than he did already, he would have given up and gone to find out what the boy knew.
In front of him Woodman came to a halt.
"That's it, sir! That's the Tree! But—there's no feeling about it now."
Jordan brushed past him.
"Stay here. Be ready to put your mask on." He walked slowly forward until he was right under the branches of the Tree.
On either side of the clearing, sitting in the treetops, the Guardians consulted anxiously.
"We must not try to drive them away," the Contact said. "Yes, we must do as he suggested."
Jordan looked up at the branches and dared them to depress him.
"I don't feel anything," he said at last. "Woodman, are you certain this is the right tree?"
"Well, I was, sir." Woodman approached it in growing doubt. "All these little clearings are so much alike, I could have—no, it is the right one! I tied my handkerchief to this branch for a marker, before I bolted. Here it is."
The Guardians gave the telepathic equivalent of a sigh and started on the next line of defense.
"You know, sir—" Woodman was carefully deferential—"I've never seen another specimen like this. After all, this little bit of the Forest is pretty well cut off—the Rift on one side, the Mountains on the other and the River in the south. This type of soil doesn't even extend as far as the River. You might get forms here which were unique—relics, or species evolved since the Rift opened. I don't feel we ought to destroy it without very good reason."
Jordan scowled up at the nearest pod.
"I wasn't proposing to destroy it here and now! If the thing is a potential menace we must find out about it, that's all. I must say I don't… what's that?"
The sound of snapping twigs could be heard back along the path. Woodman started down it with Jordan at his heels; it was so dark that he was almost on top of Dr. Scott before he saw her.
"John! Thank goodness. Listen, you've got to come back at once. It's . it's Ricky. He's gone. I went to his cabin like you said, and he wasn't there. He isn't anywhere in camp. He's gone."
There was a flurry in the camp, but it was an organized flurry. Jordan, white and sick-looking, nevertheless had himself well under control. Important facts were sorted out quickly.
Three parties working on the east side of the clearing could swear that Ricky had not passed them.
Various delicate gadgets which responded violently to the movement of humans anywhere near them were rigged in the wood to the north, which was taboo in consequence. They showed no sign of disturbance.
That left the south and the west. South was a stretch of about eight miles of forest, unbroken until it reached the big river. West was about half a mile of forest, fairly well explored, and then the Great Rift.
"There'd be no sense in going that way." Jordan laid a pointer on the map to indicate the Rift; he noticed in a detached way that his hand was quite steady. "It doesn't lead anywhere. There's just one place he could be making for, if we assume him to have an intelligible plan, and that is the First Base on the coast. The one way he could possibly get there would be to get to the river and float down it on one of the log-rafts—we saw plenty of them coming down while we were at the base."
"But the rapids—" said somebody.
"Has anyone reason to suppose that Ricky knew about the rapids?" Beads of sweat stood out on Jordan's forehead. No one answered. "We have to find him before he gets there. Unless any of you can suggest another way he might be trying to go."
Nobody cared to suggest that Ricky, if he had flung off in blind panic, might be headed nowhere in particular under the shade of the black trees. On the south side the paths went only for half a mile or so, and if he left them he could be lost within a hundred yards of the camp. They had already tried to pick up the tracker he was supposed to carry, but he had evidently switched it off or thrown it away.
The geologist, Penn, spoke suddenly from the back of the group.
"How about the Rift? It interested him. He might try to get across."
"That's possible," said Jordan. "On the Rift he'd be relatively easy to spot. That's why I propose to leave it till later. We have only one heliflier. If he's gone through the forest to the River we have to catch him at once. He's been gone two and a half hours. If he went straight to the nearest point of the river he might be there by now. The heliflier's the only chance. I can patrol the whole stretch and spot him as soon as he comes to it. If he hasn't reached it by dawn, I'll go back and fly over the Rift. If he does happen to be there, he won't take much harm in that time."
"There are two helifliers," someone suggested.
"No," said Jordan sharply. "The other is unsafe."
Not all the party were to join the hunt at once.
"There are only a few profitable lines," said Jordan. "We don't want everybody exhausted at the same time. This may be more than one day's search. And some of you have long-term observations to continue." He raised his hand, stilling a protest. "If to take all of you would increase the speed with which we are likely to find Ricky by one per cent, or half that, I'd take you all. But I won't ruin several months' work for nothing."
In the end several parties set out through the trees south and one went west. Jordan had already taken the one serviceable heliflier and departed. They had arranged an automatic sound-signal to go off every half hour in the clearing, in case Ricky was lost and trying to find his way back, and there were flares and a searchlight for when it became dark.
Ellen Scott had been left behind as part of the "reinforcements." She managed to catch Woodman before his party left.
"You used the second heliflier, didn't you? What's wrong with it?"
Woodman grimaced. "It failed to co-operate over landing. I got down intact by the skin of my incisors and had to walk home—we fetched it finally on the truck. I found a rough patch on one of the power planes and cleaned it up. That may or may not have been the cause of the trouble. We haven't got checking equipment here and nobody's tried it out the hard way. Leave it alone, Ellen. When those things are good they're very very good. Once they act up—leave them alone. It wouldn't be any use over the Forest and Doc. J. won't miss anything on the River."
"How about the Rift?"
"Why should he go there? He was upset but he wasn't crazy. No, he must have set out for the base camp—probably thinks he'll be treated as a hero if he gets there. I'll give him
heroics next time we meet."
Ellen was occupied for the next hour with various laboratory jobs to be done for members of the search party. Reports came in every few minutes over the radio, but they were all negative. The ground was hard dry. If Ricky had stuck to the broken trails, he would leave no sign. Even off them, he was small enough to walk under the trees where a grown man would have had to push his way through. There were three chances: to see him from the air, to get a fix on his radio, and to come upon him among the trees. And however systematic the searchers were they knew perfectly well that they could only do that by chance.
Unless one could guess where he had gone. Jordan thought he had guessed.
Ellen prowled restlessly about. What would Ricky have done? Nothing had been taken from his room; had he set out without any equipment at all?
She went to the kitchen. Barney was muddling around among his store-cupboards, in a very bad mood. He had wanted to go with the search parties and had been turned down.
"Barney," said Ellen quickly, "did Ricky take any food?"
"That's what I'm trying to check, Miss. There's some biscuits gone, I think. He could have taken them, or it could have been anyone this afternoon. And I think one of the big canteens has gone, but I suppose a search party took it."
"They didn't," said Ellen sharply. "There are always plenty of streams, apart from the pools in the leaves. They only took small water bottles."
"One of the big canteens has gone," repeated Barney obstinately. "And one of the water bottles isn't, if you take my meaning—Ricky did not take one of those, I mean, I've accounted for them. The canteen I can't account for. But Ricky wouldn't lumber himself up with that," he added morosely. "He couldn't carry it if it was more than half full, and he knows about the streams as well as anybody. No, I reckon someone pinched it for a collecting tin or something. That's how it goes in this place, and now we can see what comes of it. You can't keep a proper check on anything—"
But Dr. Scott had gone.
She waited, fuming, until the party which had gone west came back.
"Yes, we looked over the Rift all right," said the leader morosely. "Hell, Ellen, the whole place is a heat-trap. With the haze and flickers visibility is about twenty yards. Even from the air you wouldn't see anything, unless maybe when the shadows get longer and before they get too long. Jordan wouldn't see anything if he did fly over it now. Besides, why should the kid have gone into that oven?"
Ellen turned away. Why should Ricky have gone that way? But why should he have taken a big canteen, unless he was going to cross a waterless area? If he had taken it, of course. But there were plenty of containers in the stores for scientific work.
Ricky had been interested in the Rift, certainly. He had been asking questions about it yesterday—one of the few times lately he had shown interest in anything at all.
But visibility in the Rift was bad now. When the shadows were longer—
Jordan called over the radio. He had been flying up and down the river and the adjacent forest for the last hour and a half. Ricky had been gone about four hours.
There were three hours of daylight left.
Two hours later the situation was unchanged. To the parties in the forest night would make little difference; they were using lights already. Jordan proposed to stay in the air—one or other of the moons would be in the sky most of the night. There was about one hour of daylight left.
Ellen Scott listened to his report, and those of the search parties. Then she went briskly to the place where the one remaining heliflier was parked. She found another member of the expedition contemplating it gloomily.
"Come away from there, Phil," she said severely.
"Oh, hell, Ellen, there's a seventy-five per cent chance the thing's all right. Woodman said he'd fixed up a rough plane, didn't he?" The man turned away nevertheless. "What in Space did Jordan want to bring that kid here for?"
Ten minutes later he shot out of his cabin, where he had been dispiritedly collecting together the makings of a drink, in time to see the heliflier rise gently into the air and disappear towards the west.
Although the shadows were beginning to lengthen the Rift was like a furnace. The water in the canteen was hot. Ricky and Big Sword sat in the slightly cooler earth on the north of a boulder and contemplated the forest lying away to the left—not the forest they knew, but the strange trees of the farther side.
Big Sword's goggle eyes did not register emotion, but Ricky could feel the stir of curiosity in him. Big Sword was already reaching out to new streams, new treetops, new bare places that would be warm in the sun. For himself Ricky could only think about the two miles remaining to be walked.
He had hopelessly underestimated the time it would take him to pick his way through eight miles of boulders, too hot for the hand, walking on sliding shingle; he had managed less than two miles an hour. But now he had to get on. He stirred himself, got Big Sword perched again on his shoulder and re-strapped the canteen, lighter now but still a burden.
He had gone perhaps a dozen strides when the shadow of the heliflier came up behind and settled over his head.
Ricky started to run. There was no sense to it, and Big Sword disliked the effects, but he ran just the same, with the water sloshing about on his back. The shadow of the flier slid forward a hundred yards and it began to come down over a comparatively level place. Ricky swerved sideways. He heard a shout echo among the boulders, but the echo of combined relief and exasperation in his mind rang louder.
"Ricky! Stop and talk! Whatever it is, I'll help. There's no sense in running. If I get in touch with your father, there'll be another flier and several people here in twenty minutes. Stop! Listen to me, will you, you—"
The shouts echoed on for a moment, but the thought had stopped.
Dr. Scott came whirling up through hot red mists to find herself lying beside a fire. A very hot fire, in a stone fireplace. It didn't make sense. Warm water was being sloshed across her face and there was a murmur of voices—two of them.
"She hit her head. That's all. She fainted. She'll come round in a minute. Then you'll hear her. It isn't sleep, no—not exactly. What's the matter? Why don't you—"
The second voice was no more than a vague murmur of curiosity; it was beginning to sound irritated as well.
Ellen remembered that she had been running among a lot of boulders and had twisted her foot. No doubt she had hit her head when she fell; certainly it ached. But what had she been doing that for?
She opened her eyes.
Ricky's anxious face hung directly above her and he was pouring water from his cupped hand on to her forehead. Beside him was—
Ellen winced and shut her eyes.
"Dr. Scott. Please!" Ricky sounded worried. "Are you hurt?"
"Delirious, I think," said Ellen faintly. She opened her eyes again. "Where did it go?"
Ricky's face was a study in doubt and other emotions. Ellen put a hand to the aching spot on the back of her head and began very cautiously to sit up.
"Come on, Ricky," she said firmly. "Who were you talking to?"
"Aloud?" said Ricky, in tones of surprise. "Oh, so that's why he couldn't hear."
Ellen shut her eyes again. "I'm the one with concussion, not you," she pointed out. "Who couldn't hear?"
"Well, his name's Big Sword," said Ricky doubtfully. "More or less, that is. He says he's coming back, anyway."
Ellen opened her eyes once more. They focused on the region of Ricky's right ear. Laid gently over it was a skinny black hand with four long, many-jointed fingers. A slender arm stole into view, attached to what might have been a medium-sized potato that had happened to grow black. On top of this was perched a head about the size of a large egg. The greater part of this was occupied by two large light-gray eyes with slit pupils and dully shining surfaces. They goggled at her solemnly.
Once again she was aware of a vague murmur of curiosity, not divisible into words.
Ellen drew a deep breath. "Ricky
, this this friend of yours. Why did you bring him here?"
Ricky studied her face earnestly. "It was my idea, not his, Dr. Scott. I wanted to get to the forest over there. To the other side of the Rift."
"But why?"
Ricky shook his head.
"It wasn't that at all. It was my idea, I tell you, not Big Sword's. He didn't . didn't hypnotize me. He wouldn't have done it to Barney except that he couldn't think of any thing else to do. And I've absolutely got to get there now!"
Ellen sat up and stared at him. "All right, Ricky. Listen, you tell me the reason. If it's a good one… well, I must let your father know you're safe. But I won't tell him where you are. I'll fly you to the forest, and then back. How about that?"
Ricky breathed a sigh of relief. "Yes," he said. "Is Doc. J. very worried?"
"Worried? Listen, make it quick. I'm going to call him in ten minutes, whatever. What are you doing here?"
Ricky sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. "The idea began with the jellyfish, really," he said. "The male jellyfish in the lake."
The heliflier had completed the fifth sweep down the river to the Sea; back up the river to the rapids, where many rafts of floating vegetation broke up and re-formed, making Jordan's heart jump as he hovered above them; on up the river to the point he had fixed as farthest east. It was no good to fly over the forest; he had found that he could not pick up the search parties when he knew they were directly below him. The River was his only hope.
Nearly time to make another report. His hand was on the button of the radio when the speaker came suddenly to life.
Another Part of the Galaxy Page 9