Starman Jones (26 page)

Being captive had been tolerable because of her, he admitted—now he had nothing to look forward to but day after day of losing at three-dee while Ellie grimly proved that girls were as good as men and better. At the end of it they would wind up as an item in the diet of a thing that should never have been born.

If only Dr. Hendrix hadn’t died!

If only he had been firm with Ellie when it mattered.

To top it off, and at the moment almost the worst of all, he felt that if he ate just one more of those blasted pawpaws it would gag him.

He was awakened by a hand on his shoulder and a whisper in his ear. “Max!”

“What the—?”

“
Quiet!
Not a sound.”

It was Sam crouching over him—Sam!

As he sat up, sleep jarred out of him by adrenalin shock, he saw Sam move noiselessly to where Ellie slept. He squatted over her but did not touch her. “Miss Eldreth,” he said softly.

Ellie’s eyes opened and stared. She opened her mouth. Max was terrified that she might cry out. Sam hastily signed for silence; she looked at him and nodded. Sam knelt over her, seemed to study something in the shadow-laced moonlight, then took out a hand gun. There was the briefest of low-energy discharges, entirely silent, and Ellie stood up—free. Sam returned to Max. “Hold still,” he whispered. “I don’t want to burn you.” He knelt over Max’s bound ankle.

When the gun flared, Max felt an almost paralyzing constriction around his ankle, then the thing fell off. The amputated major part contracted and jerked away into the shadows. Max stood up. “How—”

“Not a word. Follow me.” Sam led off into the bushes with Ellie behind him and Max following closely. They had gone only twenty yards when there was a whimpering cry of “Ellie!” and the spider puppy landed in Eldreth’s arms. Sam turned suddenly.

“Keep her quiet,” he whispered, “for your life.”

Ellie nodded and started petting the little creature, crooning to it voicelessly. When Chipsie tried to talk, she silenced it, then stuffed it inside her shirt. Sam waited these few moments, now started on without speaking.

They proceeded for several hundred yards as near silently as three people who believe their lives hang on it can manage. Finally, Sam stopped. “This is as far as we dare go,” he said in a low voice. “Any farther in the dark and I’d be lost. But I’m pretty sure we are outside their sleeping grounds. We’ll start again at the first light.”

“How did you get here in the dark, then?”

“I didn’t. Chips and I have been hiding in thick bushes since midafternoon, not fifty feet from you.”

“Oh.” Max looked around, looked up at the stars. “I can take us back in the dark.”

“You can? It ’ud be a darn good thing. These babies don’t stir out at night—I think.”

“Let me get in the lead. You get behind Ellie.”

It took more than an hour to get to the edge of the tableland. The darkness, the undergrowth, the need for absolute silence, and the fact that Max had to take it slowly to keep his bearings despite his photographic memory all slowed them down. The trip downhill into the valley was even slower.

When they reached the edge of the trees with comparatively flat grassland in front Sam halted them and surveyed the valley by dim moonlight. “Mustn’t get caught in the open,” he whispered. “They can’t throw those snakes too well among trees, but out in the open—oh, brother!”

“You know about the throwing ropes?”

“Sure.”

“Sam,” whispered Ellie. “Mr. Anderson, why did…”

“Sssh!” he cautioned. “Explanations later. Straight across, at a dogtrot. Miss Eldreth, you set the pace. Max, pick your bearings and guide us. We’ll run side by side. All set?”

“Just a minute.” Max took the spider puppy from Eldreth, zipping it inside his shirt as she had done. Mr. Chips did not even wake up, but moaned softly like a disturbed baby. “Okay.”

They ran and walked and ran again for a half hour or more, wasting no breath on words, putting everything into gaining distance from the centaur community. Knee-high grass and semi-darkness made the going hard. They were almost to the bottom of the valley and Max was straining to spot the stream when Sam called out, “Down! Down flat!”

Max hit dirt, taking it on his elbows to protect Chips; Ellie flopped beside him. Max turned his head cautiously and whispered, “Centaurs?”

“No. Shut up.”

A hobgoblin balloon, moving at night to Max’s surprise, was drifting across the valley at an altitude of about a hundred feet. Its course would take it past them, missing them by perhaps a hundred yards. Then it veered and came toward them.

It lost altitude and hovered almost over them. Max saw Sam aim carefully, steadying his pistol with both hands. There was momentarily a faint violet pencil from gun to hobgoblin; the creature burst and fell so close by that Max could smell burned meat. Sam returned his weapon and got to his feet. “One less spy,” he said with satisfaction. “Let’s get going, kids.”

“You think those things spy?”

“‘Think’? We know. Those polo ponies have this place
organized.
Pipe down and make miles.”

Ellie found the stream by falling into it. They hauled her out and waded across, stopping only to drink. On the other bank Sam said, “Where’s your left shoe, Miss Eldreth?”

“It came off in the brook.”

Sam stopped to search but it was useless; the water looked like ink in the faint light. “No good,” he decided. “We could waste the whole night. You’re due for sore feet—sorry. Better throw away your other shoe.”

It did not slow them until they reached the far ridge beyond which lay Charityville and the ship. Soon after they started up Ellie cut her right foot on a rock. She did her best, setting her jaw and not complaining, but it handicapped them. There was a hint of dawn in the air by the time they reached the top. Max started to lead them down the arroyo that he and Ellie had come up so many year-long days ago. Sam stopped him. “Let me get this straight. This isn’t the draw that faces the ship, is it?”

“No, that one is just north of this.” Max reconstructed in his mind how it had looked from the ship and compared it with his memory of the photomap taken as the ship landed. “Actually, a shoulder just beyond the next draw faces the ship.”

“I thought so. This is the one Chips led me up, but I want us to stay in the trees as long as possible. It’ll be light by the time we’d be down to the flat.”

“Does it matter? There have never been any centaurs seen in the valley the ship is in.”

“You mean you never saw any. You’ve been away, old son. We’re in danger now—and in worse danger the closer we get to the ship. Keep your voice down—and lead us to that shoulder that sticks out toward the ship. If you can.”

Max could, though it meant going over strange terrain and keeping his bearings from his memory of a small-scale map. It involved “crossing the furrows,” too, instead of following a dry water course—which led to impasses such as thirty-foot drops that had to be gone painfully around. Sam grew edgy as the light increased and urged them to greater speed and greater silence even as Ellie’s increasingly crippled condition made his demands harder to meet.

“I really am sorry,” he whispered after she had to slide and scramble down a rock slope, checking herself with bare and bloody feet. “But it’s better to get there on stumps than to let them catch you.”

“I know.” Her face contorted but she made no sound. It was daylight by the time Max led them out on the shoulder. Silently, he indicated the ship, a half mile away. They were about level with its top.

“Down this way, I think,” he said quietly to Sam.

“No.”

“Huh?”

“Chilluns, it’s Uncle Sam’s opinion that we had better he doggo in those bushes, holding still and letting the beggar flies bite us, until after sundown.”

Max eyed the thousand yard gap. “We could run for it.”

“And four legs run faster than two legs. We’ve learned that lately.”

The bushes selected by Sam grew out to the edge of the shoulder. He crawled through them until he reached a place where he could spy the valley below while still hidden. Ellie and Max wriggled after him. The ground dropped off sharply just beyond them. The ship faced them, to their left and nearer was Charityville.

“Get comfortable,” Sam ordered, “and we’ll take turns keeping guard. Sleep if you can, this will be a long watch.”

Max tried to shift Mr. Chips around so that he might he flat. A little head poked out of his collar. “Good morning,” the spider puppy said gravely. “Breakfast?”

“No breakfast, hon,” Ellie told her. “Sam, is it all right to let her out?”

“I guess so. But keep her quiet.” Sam was studying the plain below. Max did the same.

“Sam? Why don’t we head for the village? It’s closer.”

“Nobody there. Abandoned.”

“What? Look, Sam, can’t you tell us now what’s happened?”

Sam did not take his eyes off the plain. “Okay. But hold it down to whispers. What do you want to know?”

That was a hard one—Max wanted to know everything. “What happened to the village?”

“Gave it up. Too dangerous.”

“Huh? Anybody caught?”

“Not permanently. Daigler had a gun. But then the fun began. We thought that all they had were those throwing snakes and that we had scared them off. But they’ve got lots more than that. Things that burrow underground, for example. That’s why the village had to be abandoned.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“Well…the newlyweds were already in residence. Becky Weberbauer is a widow.”

Ellie gasped and Sam whispered sharply to be quiet. Max mulled it over before saying, “Sam, I don’t see why, after they got my message, they didn’t…”

“What message?”

Max explained. Sam shook his head. “The pooch got back all right. By then we knew you were missing and were searching for you—armed, fortunately. But there was no message.”

“Huh? How did you find us?”

“Chips led me, I told you. But that was all. Somebody stuffed her into her old cage and that’s where I found her yesterday. I stopped to pet her, knowing you were gone, Miss Eldreth—and found the poor little thing nearly out of her mind. I finally got it through my head that she knew where you two were. So…” He shrugged.

“Oh. But I can’t see,” Max whispered, “why you risked it alone. You already knew they were dangerous; you should have had every man in the ship with you, armed.”

Sam shook his head. “And we would have lost every man. A sneak was possible; the other wasn’t. And we had to get you back.”

“Thanks. I don’t know how to say it, Sam. Anyhow, thanks.”

“Yes,” added Ellie, “and stop calling me ‘Miss Eldreth.’ I’m Ellie to my friends.”

“Okay, Ellie. How are the feet?”

“I’ll live.”

“Good.” He turned his head to Max. “But I didn’t say we
wanted
to get you back, I said we
had
to. You, Max. No offense, Ellie.”

“Huh? Why me?”

“Well…” Sam seemed reluctant. “You’ll get the details when you get back. But it looks like you’ll be needed if they take the ship off. You’re the only astrogator left.”

“Huh? What happened to Simes?”

“
Quiet!
He’s dead.”

“For Pete’s sake.” Max decided that, little as he liked Simes, death at the hands of the centaurs he would not have wished on any human; he said so.

“Oh, no, it wasn’t that way. You see, when Captain Blaine died…”

“The Captain,
too?
”

“Yes.”

“I knew he was sick, I didn’t know he was that sick.”

“Well, call it a broken heart. Or honorable hara-kiri. Or an accident. I found an empty box for sleeping pills when I helped pack his things. Maybe he took them, or maybe your pal Simes slipped them in his tea. The Surgeon certified natural causes and that’s how it was logged. What is a natural cause when a man can’t bear to live any longer?”

Ellie said softly, “He was a good man.”

“Yes,” agreed Sam. “Too good, maybe.”

“But how about Simes?”

“Well, now, that was another matter. Simes seemed to feel that he was crown prince, but the First wouldn’t stand for it. Something about some films the Chief Computerman had. Anyhow, he tried to get tough with Walther and I sort of broke his neck. There wasn’t time to be gentle,” Sam added hastily. “Simes pulled a gun.”

“Sam! You aren’t in trouble?”

“None, except here and now. If we—quiet, kids!” He peered more sharply through the bushes. “Not a sound, not a movement,” he whispered. “It may miss us.”

A hobgoblin was drifting down from north, paralleling the ridge above and out from it, as if it were scouting the high land. Max said in Sam’s ear, “Hadn’t we better scrunch back?”

“Too late. Just hold still.”

The balloon drifted abreast of them, stopped, then moved slowly toward them. Max saw that Sam had his gun out. He held his fire until the hobgoblin hovered above them. The shot burned needles and branches but it brought down the thing.

“Sam! There’s another one!”

“Where?” Sam looked where Max pointed. The second hobgoblin apparently had been covering the first, higher and farther out. Even as they watched it veered away and gained altitude.

“Get it, Sam!”

Sam stood up. “Too late. Too far and too late. Well, kids, away we go. No need to keep quiet. Sit down and slide, Ellie; it’ll save your feet some.”

Down they went, scattering rocks and tearing their clothes, with Mr. Chips on her own and enjoying it. At the bottom Sam said, “Max, how fast can you do a half mile?”

“I don’t know. Three minutes.”

“Make it less. Get going. I’ll help Ellie.”

“No.”

“You get there! You’re needed.”

“No!”

Sam sighed. “Always some confounded hero. Take her other arm.”

They made a couple of hundred yards half carrying Eldreth, when she shook them off. “I can go faster alone,” she panted.

“Okay, let’s go!” Sam rasped.

She proved herself right. Ignoring her injured feet she pumped her short legs in a fashion which did not require Max’s best speed to keep up, but nevertheless kept him panting. The ship grew larger ahead of them. Max saw that the cage was up and wondered how long it would take to attract attention and get it lowered.