The Star Fox (16 page)

‘Yes.’ A certain life returned to Vadász’s speech. ‘And here is the Hurst of Wenilwain on Lochan’s northern slope. About a hundred airline kilometers hence, would you not say? I doubt we can survive that big a walk. But if we can get moderately near, someone flying on patrol or on a hunt ought to spy us.’

‘And Wenilwain knows us. Uh-huh.’ Heim shook his head. ‘It’s a long chance to take, I admit. What are these areas marked between us and him? The Walking Forest; the Slaughter Machines; Thundersmoke.’

‘Let me try—’ Vadász riffled through the pitifully thin handbook. ‘No entry. But then, this is a stat of the map annotated by Gregorios and Charles, on the basis of what they learned while dealing with the natives. They must have planned to pass the information on when they got home. It’s a common practice.’

‘I know. And Greg’s dead. Well, we’ll find out.’

‘What of those?’ Vadász pointed at Bragdon painfully digging, Jocelyn huddled by herself.

‘They have to come along, I’m afraid. For one thing, it’ll puzzle and delay their friends, not to find anybody here, and so give us time to find cover. For another thing, we’ll need every hand we can get, especially when we hit the foothills.’

‘Wait!’ Vadász slapped the ground. His voice bleakened. ‘Gunnar, we cannot do it. We have air recyclers, but nothing
for water except a day’s worth in these canteens. That isn’t even allowing for what we will need to reconstitute powdered food. And you know that ten kilometers a day, afoot, will be fantastic progress.’

Heim actually noticed himself smiling, lopsidedly. ‘Haven’t you ever met that trick? We won’t be far from native water at any time; notice these streams on the map. So we fill our canteens, put the laser pistol at wide beam and low intensity, and boil out the ammonia.’

‘Spending the capacitor charges,’ Vadász objected. ‘That leaves only your slugthrower for defense.’

‘Shucks, Endre, local tigers are no problem. We’re as unsavory to them as they’d be to us. Our biggest enemy is the gravity drag; our second biggest the short food and medicine supply; our third, maybe, bad weather if we hit any.’

‘M-m-m … as you say. I would still like to know precisely what the Slaughter Machines are. But – yes, of course, we will try.’ The minstrel got up almost bouncily. ‘In fact, you have made me feel so much better that I think I can take my turn at digging.’

They had not much time to spare, enough barely to scrape a little earth over the fallen man and hear Vadász sing the Paternoster. Then they departed.

F
OUR
Staurnian days? Five? Heim wasn’t sure. The nightmare had gone on too long.

At first they made good time. The ground rolled quite gently upward, decked with sparse forest that hid them from aerial searchers without hindering their feet. They were all in trim physical shape. And their survival gear, awkward though it seemed, was a miracle of lightness and compactness.

Yet between it and the gravity, each was carrying a burden equal to more than his own Earth weight. ‘Good time’ meant an average of hardly over one kilometer per hour.

Then the land canted and they were on the slopes of Kimreth’s foothills. Worse, their bodies were beginning to show cumulative effects of stress. This was nothing so simple as
exhaustion. Without a sealtent, they could never take off their airsuits. The recyclers handled volatile by-products of metabolism; but slowly, slowly, the fractional percent that escaped chemical treatment built up. Stench and itch were endurable, somewhat, for a while. Too much aldehyde, ketone, organic acid, would not be.

And high gravity has a more subtle, more deadly effect than overworking the heart. It throws the delicate body-fluid balance – evolved through a billion years on
one
smaller planet – out of kilter. Plasma seeps through cell walls. Blood pools in the extremities, ankles swell while the brain starves. On Staurn this does not happen fast. But it happens.

Without the drugs in their medikits, gravanol, kinesthan, assorted stimulants and analgesics, the travelers would not have traveled three days. When the drugs gave out (and they were getting low) there would be perhaps one day in which to go on, before a man lay down to die.

Is it worth it?
gibbered through the querning in Heim’s skull.
Why didn’t we go back home? I can’t remember now
. His thought fluttered away again. Every remnant of attention must go to the Sisyphus task of picking up one foot, advancing it, putting it down, picking up the other foot, advancing it. … Meanwhile a death-heavy weight dragged at his right side.
Oh, yes, Jocelyn
, he recalled from a remote past.
The rest
of us have to take turns helping her along
.

She stumbled. Both of them came near falling. ‘Gotta rest,’ her air-warped voice wavered.

‘You rested … till ten minutes ago. … Come!’ He jerked brutally on the improvised harness which joined them.

They reeled on for another five hundred seconds. ‘Time,’ Vadász called at the end. They lowered themselves down on their backs and breathed.

Eventually Heim rose to his knees. His vision had cleared and his head throbbed a bit less. He could even know, in a detached way, that the scenery was magnificent.

Eastward the hills up which he was laboring swooped in long curves and dales towards the illimitable hazy plain. The gentled light of an evening sun turned their colors – tawny and orange, with red splashes to mark stands of forest – into a smoldering richness. Not far away a brook twisted bright among boulders, until it foamed over in a series of cataracts whose noise was like bells through the still air. A swarm of insectoidal creatures,
emerald bodies and rainbow wings, hovered above the pools it made.

Westward the mountains loomed dark and wild against the sun, which was near their ridge. Yet it tinged Lochan’s snow-cone, a shape as pure as Fuji’s, with unearthly greens and blues under a violet heaven. The crags threw their shadows far down the sides, dusking whatever was ahead on Heim’s route. But he saw that, a kilometer hence, a wood grew. His field glasses showed it apparently thick with underbrush. But it was too far to go around – he couldn’t see the northern or southern end – while it was probably not very wide.

Vadász had also been looking in that direction. ‘I think best we call this a day,’ he said.

‘It’s early yet,’ Heim objected.

‘But the sun will soon go below that high horizon. And we are exhausted, and tomorrow we shall have to cut our way through yonder stuff. A good rest is a good investment for us, Gunnar.’

Hell, we’ve been sleeping nine hours out of the eighteen!
Heim glanced at the others. Their suits had become as familiar to him as the seldom seen faces. Jocelyn was already unconscious. Uthg-a-K’thaq seemed to flow bonelessly across the place where he lay. Vadász and Bragdon sat tailor style, but their backs were bent. And every nerve in Heim carried waves of weariness.

‘All right,’ he said.

He hadn’t much appetite, but forced himself to mix a little powder with water and squeeze the mess through his chowlock. When that was done, he stretched himself as well as his backpack allowed. Some time had passed before he realized that he wasn’t sleepy. Exhausted, yes; aching and throbbing; but not sleepy. He didn’t know whether to blame overtiredness or the itch in undepilated face and unwashed skin.
Lord, Lord, what I’d give for a bath, clean sheets to lie between, clean air to breathe!
He braked that thought. There was danger enough without adding an extra psychological hazard.

Pushing himself to a seated position, he watched the light die on Mount Lochan. The sky darkened toward night, a few stars trembled, the little crescent of the outer moon stood steely near the zenith.

‘You too?’

Heim shifted so he could see through his faceplate who had
joined him. Bragdon. Reflexively, his hand dropped to his pistol.

Bragdon laughed without humour. ‘Relax. You’ve committed us too thoroughly.’ After a moment: ‘Damn you.’

‘Who made this mess in the first place?’ Heim growled.

‘You did, back in the Solar System. … I’ve heard that Jews believe death itself to be an act of expiation. Maybe when we die here on Staurn, you’ll make some amends for him we had to bury.’

‘I didn’t shoot him,’ Heim said between his teeth.

‘You brought about the situation.’

‘Dog your hatch before I take a poke at you.’

‘Oh, I don’t hold myself guiltless. I should have managed things better. The whole human race is blood guilty.’

‘I’ve heard that notion before, and I don’t go along with it. The human race is nothing but a species. Individuals are responsible for what they personally do.’

‘Like setting out to fight private wars? I tell you, Heim, that man would be alive today if you’d stayed home.’

Heim squinted through the murk. He could not see Brag-don’s face, nor interpret nuances in the transformed voice. But—‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I could accuse you of murder in the course of making your own little foreign policy. My expedition is legal. It may even be somewhat more popular than otherwise. I’m sorry about Greg. He was my friend. More, he was under my command. But he knew the risks and accepted them freely. There are worse ways to die than in battle for something that matters. You do protest too much.’

Bragdon started backward. ‘Don’t say any more!’

Heim hammered pitilessly. ‘Why aren’t you asleep? Could it be that Greg came back in your dreams? Have you been thinking that your noisy breed may be powered less by love than by hate? Would you like to chop off the finger that pulled trigger on a man who was trying to do his best for Earth? Can you afford to call anyone a murderer?’

‘Go to hell!’ Bragdon screamed. ‘Go to hell! Go to hell!’ He crawled off on all fours. Some meters distant, he collapsed and shuddered.

Maybe I was too rough on him
, Heim thought.
He’s sincere
. …
Fout on that. Sincerity is the most overrated virtue in the
catalogue
. He eased himself back to the turf. Presently he slept.

Sunrise woke him, level across the Uneasy Lands and tinging
Mount Lochan with fire. He felt more stiff and hollow-headed each dawn, but it helped to move about, fix a cold breakfast and boil a fresh supply of water. Bragdon was totally silent; no one else said many words. But as they started the long slog toward the forest – a whole kilometer uphill – Vadász began to sing.

‘
Trois jeunes tambours, s’en revenaient de guerre.

Trois jeunes tambours, s’en reyenaient de guerre,

Et ri, et ran, ra-pa-ta-plan,

S’en revenaient de guerre
.—’

When he had finished, he went on to “Rimini’, ‘Marching through Georgia’, The British Grenadiers’, and ‘From Syrtis to Cydonia’. Heim and Jocelyn panted with him in the choruses and perhaps Uthg-a-K’thaq, or even Bragdon, got some help too from the tramping rhythms and the brave images of home. They reached the woods sooner, in better shape, than expected.

‘Thanks, Endre,’ Heim said.

‘My job, you know,’ Vadász answered.

Resting before they went among the trees, Heim studied the growth more closely. At a distance, by dawnlight, he had seen that it wound across the hills along a fault line, and was as sharply bordered as if artificial. Since the northwestern edge was well above him on a steep rise, he had also made out a curious, churned sweep of soil on that side, which passed around the slopes beyond his purview. Now he was too near to see anything but the barrier itself.

‘Not brushy after all,’ he observed in surprise. ‘Only one kind of plant. What do you think of that?’

‘We are none xenowotanists,’ the engineer grunted.

The trees were about four meters tall; nothing grows high on Staurn. And they were no thicker than a man’s arm. But numberless flexible branches grew along the stems, from top to bottom, each in turn split into many shoots. In places the entanglement of limbs was so dense as to be nearly solid. Only the upper twigs bore leaves; but those were matted together into a red roof beneath which the inner forest looked night-black.

‘This’ll be machete work,’ Heim said. ‘We shouldn’t have to move a lot slower than usual, though. One man cuts – that doesn’t look too hard – while the others rest. I’ll begin.’ He unlimbered his blade.

Which! Whick!
The wood was soft, the branches fell right
and left as fast as he could wield his tool. In an hour the males ran through a cycle of turns, Jocelyn being excused, and were far into the forest.
With the sun still only a couple of hours up
, Heim exulted.

Take over, Gunnar,’ Vadász rattled. The sweat is gurgling around my mouth.’

Heim rose and advanced along the narrow trail. It was hot and still in here. A thick purple twilight soaked through the leaves, making vision difficult where one stood and impossible a few meters off. Withes rustled against him, springily resisting his passage. He felt a vibration go back through the machete and his wrist, into his body, as he chopped.

Huh! Odd. Like the whole interlocked wilderness shivering
.

The trees stirred and soughed. Yet there was no breath of wind.

Jocelyn shrieked.

Heim spun on his heel. A branch was coiling down past her, along her airsuit. Something struck his back. He lifted his machete – tried to – a dozen tendrils clutched him by the arm. He tore free.

An earthquake rumble went through the gloom. Heim lost balance under a thrust. He fell to one knee. Pain shot through the point of impact. The tree before his eyes swayed down. Its many-fingered lower branches touched the soil and burrowed. Leaves drew clear of each other with a crackling like fire. He glimpsed sky, then he was blinded by their descent about his head.

He shouted and slashed. A small space opened around him. The tree was pulling loose its roots. Groaning, shuddering, limbs clawed into the earth, it writhed forward.

The entire forest was on the march. The pace wasn’t quick, no faster than a man could walk on Staurn, but it was resistless. Heim scrambled up and was instantly thrown against a tangle of whipping branches. Through airsuit and helmet he felt those buffets. He reeled away. A trunk, hitching itself along, smote him in the stomach. He retched and dropped his machete. Almost at once it began to be covered, as limbs pulled from the ground and descended for the next grab along their way. Heim threw what remained of his strength against them. They resisted with demoniac tenacity. He never knew how he managed to part them long enough to retrieve the blade.