Star Hunter (9 page)

"A straight ram course," Hume muttered, more to himself than Vye.

Again the flyer drove forward in a rising thrust of speed. Then the
smooth purr of the propulsion unit faltered, broke into protesting
coughs. Hume worked over the controls, beads of sweat showing on his
forehead and cheek in the gleam of the cabin light.

"Deading—deading out!"

He brought the flitter around in a wide circle, the purr smoothed out
once more in a steady reassuring beat.

"Out run them!"

But Vye feared they were back again on the losing side of a struggle
with the unknown alien power. As they had been herded along the river,
so now they were being pushed across the sky, towards the mountains.
The enemy had followed them aloft!

Some core of stubborn will in Hume would not yet allow him to admit
that. Time and time again he climbed higher—always to meet climbing,
twisting, spurting lines of lights which reacted on the engine of the
flitter and threatened it with complete failure.

Where they were now in relation to Wass' camp or that of the safari,
Vye had no idea, and he guessed that Hume could not be too certain.

Hume switched on the flitter's com unit, tried a channel search until
he picked up a click of signal—the automatic reply of the safari
camp. His fingertip beat out in return the danger warning, then the
series of code sounds to give an edited version of what must be
guarded against.

"Wass has a man in your camp. His skin is in just as much danger as
the rest. He may not relay it to the Patrol, but he'll keep the force
barrier up and the civs inside—anything else would be malicious
neglect and a murder charge when the Guild check tape goes in. This
call is on the spacer tape now and will be a part of that—he can't
possibly alter such a report and he knows it. This is the best we can
do now—"

"We're close to the mountains, aren't we?"

"Do you know much about this part of the country?" Vye persisted.
Hume's knowledge might be their only hope.

"Flew over the range twice. Nothing to see."

"But there has to be something there."

"If there is, it didn't show up during our survey." Hume's voice was
dull with fatigue.

"You're a Guild man, you've dealt with alien life forms before—"

"The Guild doesn't deal with intelligent aliens. That's X-Tee Patrol
business. We don't land on any planet with unknown intelligent life
forms. Why should we court trouble—couldn't run a safari in under
those conditions. X-Tee certified Jumala as a wild world, our survey
confirmed that."

"Someone or something landed here after you left?"

"I don't believe so. This is too well organized an action. And since
we have a satellite guard in space, any ship landing would be taped
and recorded. No such record appeared on the Guild screens. One small
spacer—such as Wass'—could slip through by knowing procedure—just
as he did. But to land all those beasts and equipment they'd need a
regular transport. No—this must be native." Hume leaned forward
again, flipped a switch.

A small red light answered on the central board.

"Radar warn-off," he explained.

So they wouldn't end up smeared against some cliff face anyway. Which
was only small comfort amid terrifying possibilities.

Hume had taken the precaution just in time. The light blinked faster,
and the speed of the flyer was checked as the automatic control
triggered by the warn-off came into command. Hume's hands were still
on the board, but a system of relays put safety devices into action
with a speed past that which a human pilot could initiate.

They were descending and had to accept that, since the warn-off,
operating for the sake of the passengers, had ruled that move best.
The directive would glide the flitter to the best available landing.
It was only moments before the shock gear did touch surface. Then the
engine was silent.

"This is it," Hume observed.

"What do we do now?" Vye wanted to know.

"Wait—"

"Wait! For what?"

Hume consulted his planet-time watch in the light of the cabin.

"We have about an hour until dawn—if dawn arrives here at the same
time it does in the plains. I don't propose to go out blindly in the
dark."

Which made sense. Except that to sit here, quietly, in their cramped
quarters, not knowing what might be waiting outside, was an ordeal Vye
found increasingly harder to bear. Maybe Hume guessed his discomfort,
maybe he was following routine procedure. But he turned, thumbed open
one of the side panels in Vye's compartment, and dug out the emergency
supplies.

They sorted the crash rations into small packs. A blanket of the
water-resistant, feather-heavy Ozakian spider silk was cut into a
protective covering for Vye. That piece of tailoring occupied them
until the graying sky permitted them a full picture of the pocket in
which the flitter had landed. The dark foliage of the mountain growth
was broken here by a ledge of dark-blue stone on which the flyer
rested.

To the right was a sheer drop, and a land slip had cut away the ledge
itself a few feet behind the flitter. There was only a steadily
narrowing path ahead, slanting upward.

"Can we take off again?" Vye hoped to be reassured that such a feat
was possible.

"Look up!"

Vye backed against the cliff wall, stared up at the sky. Well above
them those globes still swam in unwearied circles, commanding the air
lanes.

Hume had cautiously approached the outer rim of the ledge, was using
his distance glasses to scan what might lie below.

"No sign yet."

Vye knew what he meant. The globes were overhead, but the blue beasts,
or any other fauna those balls might summon, had not yet appeared.

Shouldering their packs they started along the ledge. Hume had his ray
tube, but Vye was weaponless, unless somewhere along their route he
could pick up some defensive and offensive arm. Stones had burst the
lights of the islet, they might prove as effective against the blue
beasts. He kept watch for any of the proper size and weight.

The ledge narrowed, one shoulder scraped the cliff now as they
rounded a pinnacle to lose sight of the flitter. But the globes
continued to hover over them.

"We are still traveling in the direction they want," Vye speculated.

Hume had gone to hands and knees to negotiate an ascent so steep he
had to search for head and toe holds. When they were safely past that
point they took a breather, and Vye glanced aloft again. Now the sky
was empty.

"We may have arrived, or are about to do so," said Hume.

"Where?"

Hume shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. And both of us can be
wrong."

The steep ascent did not quite reach the top of the cliff around the
face of which the ledge curled. Instead their path now leveled off and
began to widen out so that they could walk with more confidence. Then
it threaded into a crevice between two towering rock walls and sloped
downward.

A path unnaturally smooth, Vye thought, as if shaped to funnel
wayfarers on. And they came out on the rim of a valley, a valley
centered with a wood-encircled lake. They stepped from the rock of the
passage onto a springy turf which gave elastically to their tread.

Vye's sandal struck a round stone. It started from its bed in the
black-green vegetation, turned over so that round pits stared
eyelessly up at him. He was faced by the fleshless grin of a human
skull.

Hume went down on one knee, examined the ground growth, gingerly
lifted the lace of vertebrae forming a spine. That ended in a crushed
break which he studied briefly before he laid the bones gently back
into the concealing cover of the mossy stuff.

"That was done by teeth!"

The cup of green valley had not changed, it was the same as it had
been when they had emerged from the crevice. But now every clump of
trees, every wind-rippled mound of brush promised cover.

Vye moistened his lips, diverted his eyes from the skull.

"Weathered," Hume said slowly, "must have been here for seasons, maybe
planet years."

"A survivor from the L-B?" Yet this spot lay days of travel from that
clearing back in the plains.

"How did he get here?"

"Probably the same way we would have, had we not holed up on that
river island."

Driven! Perhaps the lone human on Jumala herded up into this dead-end
valley by the globes or the blue beasts. "This process must have been
in action for some time."

"Why?"

"I can give you two reasons." Hume studied the nearest trees narrowly.
"First—for some purpose, whatever we are up against wants all
interlopers moved out of the lowlands into this section, either to
imprison them, or to keep them under surveillance. Second—" He
hesitated.

Vye's own imagination supplied a second reason, a revolting one he
tried to deny to himself even as he put it into words:

"That broken spine—food...." Vye wanted Hume to contradict him, but
the Hunter only glanced around, his expression already sufficient
answer.

"Let's get out of here!" Vye was fighting down panic with every ounce
of control he could summon, trying not to bolt for the crevice. But he
knew he could not force himself any farther into that sinister valley.

"If we can!" Hume's words lingered direly in his ears.

Stones had smashed the globes by the river. If they still waited out
there Vye was willing to try and break them with his bare hands,
should escape demand such action. Hume must have agreed with those
thoughts, he was already taking long strides back to the cliff
entrance.

But that door was closed. Hume's foot, raised for the last step toward
the crevice corridor, struck an invisible obstruction. He reeled back,
clutching at Vye's shoulder.

"Something's there!"

The younger man put out his hand questingly. What his fingers
flattened against was not a tight, solid surface, but rather an unseen
elastic curtain which gave a little under his prodding and then drew
taut again.

Together they explored by touch what they could not see. The crevice
through which they had entered was now closed with a curtain they
could not pierce or break. Hume tried his ray tube. They watched thin
flame run up and down that invisible barrier, but not destroy it.

Hume relooped the tube. "Their trap is sprung."

"There may be another way out!" But Vye was already despondently sure
there was not. Those who had rigged this trap would leave no bolt
holes. But because they were human and refused to accept the
inevitable without a fight, the captives set off, not down into the
curve of the cup, but along its slope.

Tongues of brush and tree clumps brought about detours which forced
them slowly downward. They were well away from the crevice when Hume
halted, flung up a hand in silent warning. Vye listened, trying to
pick up the sound which had alarmed his companion.

It was as Vye strained to catch a betraying noise that he was first
conscious of what he did not hear. In the plains there had been
squeaking, humming, chitterings, the vocalizing of myriad grass
dwellers. Here, except for the sighing of the wind and a few insect
sounds—nothing. All inhabitants bigger than a Jumalan fly might have
long ago been routed out of the land.

"To the left." Hume faced about.

There was a heavy thicket there, too stoutly grown for anything to be
within its shadow. Whatever moved must be behind it.

Vye looked about him frantically for anything he could use as a
weapon. Then he grabbed at the long bush knife in Hume's belt sheath.
Eighteen inches of tri-fold steel gleamed wickedly, its hilt fitting
neatly into his fist as he held it point up, ready.

Hume advanced on the bush in small steps, and Vye circled to his left
a few paces behind. The Hunter was an expert with ray tube; that, too,
was part of the necessary skill of a safari leader. But Vye could
offer other help.

He shrugged out of the blanket pack he had been carrying on his back,
tossed that burden ahead.

Out of cover charged a streak of red, to land on the bait. Hume
blasted, was answered by a water-cat's high-pitched scream. The feline
writhed out of its life in a stench of scorched fur and flesh. As Vye
retrieved his clawed pack Hume stood over the dead animal.

"Odd." He reached down to grasp a still twitching foreleg, stretched
the body out with a sudden jerk.

It was a giant of its species, a male, larger than any he had seen.
But a second look showed him those ribs starting through mangy fur in
visible hoops, the skin tight over the skull, far too tight. The
water-cat had been close to death by starvation; its attack on the men
probably had been sparked by sheer desperation. A starving carnivore
in a land lacking the normal sounds of small birds and animal life, in
a valley used as a trap.

"No way out and no food." Vye fitted one thought to another out loud.

"Yes. Pin the enemy up, let them finish off one another."

"But why?" Vye demanded.

"Least trouble that way."

"There are plenty of water-cats down on the plains. All of them
couldn't be herded up here to finish each other off; it would take
years—centuries."

"This one's capture may have been only incidental, or done for the
purpose of keeping some type of machinery in working order," Hume
replied. "I don't believe this was arranged just to dispose of
water-cats."

"Suppose this was started a long time ago, and those who did it are
gone, so now it goes on working without any real intelligence behind
it. That could be the answer, couldn't it?"

"Some process triggers into action when a ship sets down on this
portion of Jumala, maybe when one planet's under certain conditions
only? Yes, that makes sense. Only why wasn't the first Patrol explorer
flaming in here caught? And the survey team—we were here for months,
cataloguing, mapping, not a whisper of any such trouble."