by James Blish
Alaskon's fever seemed to have dropped almost to normal, andhis strength nearly returned as well. The wound, thanks more to theencrusted matte of mold than to any complications within the fleshitself, was still ugly-looking, but it was now painful only when thenavigator moved carelessly, and Mathild was convinced that it wasmending. Alaskon himself, having been deprived of activity all day, wasunusually talkative.
"Has it occurred to either of you," he said in the gathering gloom,"that since that stream is water, it can't possibly be coming from theGreat Range? All the peaks over there are just cones of ashes and lava.We've seen young volcanoes in the process of building themselves, sowe're sure of that. What's more, they're usually hot. I don't see howthere could possibly be any source of water in the Range--not evenrun-off from the rains."
"It can't just come up out of the ground," Honath said. "It must be fedby rain. By the way it sounds now, it could even be the first part of aflood."
"As you say, it's probably rain-water," Alaskon said cheerfully. "Butnot off the Great Range, that's out of the question. Most likely itcollects on the cliffs."
"I hope you're wrong," Honath said. "The cliffs may be a little easierto climb from this side, but there's still the cliff tribe to thinkabout."
"Maybe, maybe. But the cliffs are big. The tribes on this side may neverhave heard of the war with our tree-top folk. No, Honath, I think that'sour only course."
"If it is," Honath said grimly, "we're going to wish more than ever thatwe had some stout, sharp needles among us."
* * * * *
Alaskon's judgment was quickly borne out. The three left the cave atdawn the next morning, Alaskon moving somewhat stiffly but not otherwisenoticeably incommoded, and resumed following the stream bed upwards--astream now swollen by the rains to a roaring rapids. After winding itsway upwards for about a mile in the general direction of the GreatRange, the stream turned on itself and climbed rapidly back toward thebasalt cliffs, falling toward the three over successively steepershelves of jutting rock.
Then it turned again, at right angles, and the three found themselves atthe exit of a dark gorge, little more than thirty feet high, but bothnarrow and long. Here the stream was almost perfectly smooth, and thethin strip of land on each side of it was covered with low shrubs. Theypaused and looked dubiously into the canyon. It was singularly gloomy.
"There's plenty of cover, at least," Honath said in a low voice. "Butalmost anything could live in a place like that."
"Nothing very big could hide in it," Alaskon pointed out. "It should besafe. Anyhow it's the only way to go."
"All right. Let's go ahead, then. But keep your head down, and be readyto jump!"
Honath lost the other two by sight as soon as they crept into the darkshrubbery, but he could hear their cautious movements nearby. Nothingelse in the gorge seemed to move at all, not even the water, whichflowed without a ripple over an invisible bed. There was not even anywind, for which Honath was grateful, although he had begun to develop animmunity to the motionless ground beneath them.
After a few moments, Honath heard a low whistle. Creeping sidewisetoward the source of the sound, he nearly bumped into Alaskon, who wascrouched beneath a thickly-spreading magnolia. An instant later,Mathilda's face peered out of the dim greenery.
"Look," Alaskon whispered. "What do you make of this?"
'This' was a hollow in the sandy soil, about four feet across and rimmedwith a low parapet of earth--evidently the same earth that had beenscooped out of its center. Occupying most of it were three grey,ellipsoidal objects, smooth and featureless.
"Eggs," Mathild said wonderingly.
"Obviously. But look at the size of them! Whatever laid them must begigantic. I think we're trespassing in something's private valley."
Mathild drew in her breath. Honath thought fast, as much to preventpanic in himself as in the girl. A sharp-edged stone lying nearbyprovided the answer. He seized it and struck.
The outer surface of the egg was leathery rather than brittle; it toreraggedly. Deliberately, Honath bent and put his mouth to the oozingsurface.
It was excellent. The flavor was decidedly stronger than that of birds'eggs, but he was far too hungry to be squeamish. After a moment'samazement, Alaskon and Mathild attacked the other two ovoids with awill. It was the first really satisfying meal they had had in Hell. Whenthey finally moved away from the devastated nest, Honath felt betterthan he had since the day he was arrested.
As they moved on down the gorge, they began again to hear the roar ofwater, though the stream looked as placid as ever. Here, too, they sawthe first sign of active life in the valley: a flight of giantdragonflies skimming over the water. The insects took fright as soon asHonath showed himself, but quickly came back, their nearly non-existentbrains already convinced that there had always been men in the valley.
The roar got louder very rapidly. When the three rounded the long,gentle turn which had cut off their view from the exit, the source ofthe roar came into view. It was a sheet of falling water as tall as thedepth of the gorge itself, which came arcing out from between twopillars of basalt and fell to a roiling, frothing pool.
"This is as far as we go!" Alaskon said, shouting to make himself heardover the tumult. "We'll never be able to get up these walls!"
Stunned, Honath looked from side to side. What Alaskon had said was alltoo obviously true. The gorge evidently had begun life as a layer ofsoft, partly soluble stone in the cliffs, tilted upright by somevolcanic upheaval, and then worn completely away by the rushing stream.Both cliff faces were of the harder rock, and were sheer and as smoothas if they had been polished by hand. Here and there a network of toughvines had begun to climb them, but nowhere did such a network even comeclose to reaching the top.
Honath turned and looked once more at the great arc of water and spray.If there were only some way to prevent their being forced to retracetheir steps--
Abruptly, over the riot of the falls, there was a piercing, hissingshriek. Echoes picked it up and sounded it again and again, all the wayup the battlements of the cliffs. Honath sprang straight up in the airand came down trembling, facing away from the pool.
At first he could see nothing. Then, down at the open end of the turn,there was a huge flurry of motion.
A second later, a two-legged, blue-green reptile half as tall as thegorge itself came around the turn in a single bound and lunged violentlyinto the far wall of the valley. It stopped as if momentarily stunned,and the great grinning head turned toward them a face of sinister andfurious idiocy.
[2]
The shriek set the air to boiling again. Balancing itself with its heavytail, the beast lowered its head and looked redly toward the falls.
The owner of the robbed nest had come home. They had met a demon of Hellat last.
* * * * *
Honath's mind at that instant went as white and blank as the under-barkof a poplar. He acted without thinking, without even knowing what hedid. When thought began to creep back into his head again, the three ofthem were standing shivering in semidarkness, watching the blurredshadow of the demon lurching back and forth upon the screen of shiningwater.
It had been nothing but luck, not foreplanning, to find that there was aconsiderable space between the back of the falls proper and the blindwall of the canyon. It had been luck, too, which had forced Honath toskirt the pool in order to reach the falls at all, and thus had takenthem all behind the silver curtain at the point where the weight of thefalling water was too low to hammer them down for good. And it had beenthe blindest stroke of all that the demon had charged after themdirectly into the pool, where the deep, boiling water had slowed itsthrashing hind legs enough to halt it before it went under the falls, asit had earlier blundered into the hard wall of the gorge.
Not an iota of all this had been in Honath's mind before he haddiscovered it to be true. At the moment that the huge reptile hadscreamed for the second time, he had simply grasped Mathild's h
and andbroken for the falls, leaping from low tree to shrub to fern faster thanhe had ever leapt before. He did not stop to see how well Mathild waskeeping up with him, or whether or not Alaskon was following. He onlyran. He might have screamed, too; he could not remember.
They stood now, all three of them, wet through, behind the curtain untilthe shadow of the demon faded and vanished. Finally Honath felt a handthumping his shoulder, and turned slowly.
Speech was impossible here, but Alaskon's pointing finger was eloquentenough. Along the back wall of the falls, where centuries of erosion hadfailed to wear away completely the original soft limestone, there was asort of serrated chimney, open toward the gorge, which looked as thoughit could be climbed. At the top of the falls, the water shot out frombetween