This was not the first time Dalgard had faced the raging fury of a
snake-devil thirsting for a kill. The slaying he had done in the arena
was an exception to the rule, not the usual hunter's luck. And now
that he saw the creature crouched at the far end of the hall he was
ready. Sssuri, also, followed their familiar pattern, separating from
his companion and slipping along the wall toward the monster, ready to
attract its attention at the proper moment.
Only one doubt remained in Dalgard's mind. This devil had not acted in
the normal brainless fashion of its kin. What if it was able to assess
the very simple maneuvers, which always before had completely baffled
its species, and attacked not the moving merman but the waiting
archer?
It was backed against another door, a closed one, as if it had fled
for refuge to some aid it had expected and did not find. But as Sssuri
moved, its long neck straightened until it was almost at right angles
with its narrow shoulders, and from its snake's jaws proceeded a
horrific hissing which arose to a scream as its leg muscles tensed for
a spring.
At just the right moment Sssuri's arm went back, his spear sang
through the air. And the snake-devil, with an incredible twist of its
neck, caught the haft of the weapon between its teeth, crunching the
iron-hard substance into powder. But with that move it exposed its
throat, and the arrow from Dalgard's bow was buried head-deep in the
soft inner flesh.
The snake-devil spat out the spear and tried to raise its head. But
the muscles were already weakening. It fought the poison long enough
to take a single step forward, its small red eyes alight with
brainless hate. Then it crashed and lay twisting. Dalgard lowered his
bow. There was no need for a second shot.
Sssuri regarded the remains of his spear unhappily. Not only was it
the product of long hours of work, but no merman ever felt fully
equipped to face the world without such a weapon to hand. He salvaged
the barbed head and broke it free of the shred of haft the snake-devil
had left. Knotting it at his belt he turned to Dalgard.
"Shall we see what lies beyond?"
Dalgard crossed the hall to test the door. It did not yield to an
inward push, but rolled far enough into the wall to allow them
through.
On the other side was a room which amazed the scout. The colonists had
their laboratory, their workshops, in which they experimented and
tried to preserve the remnants of knowledge their forefathers had
brought across space, as well as to discover new. But the extent of
this storehouse with its bewildering mass of odd machines, tanks,
bales, and stocked shelves and tables, was too much to be taken in
without a careful and minute examination.
"We are not the first to walk here." Sssuri had given little attention
to what was stacked about him. Instead he bent over the disturbed dust
in one aisle. Dalgard noted as he went to join the merman that there
were gaps on those tables which ran the full length of the room, lines
left in the grimy deposit of years which told of things recently
moved. And then he saw what had interested Sssuri: tracks, some
resembling those which his own bare feet might leave, except that
there were only three toes!
"_They._"
Dalgard who had been a hunter and a tracker before he was an explorer
crouched for a clearer view. Yes, they were recent, yet not made today
or even yesterday; there was a thin film of dust resettled in each.
"Some days ago. They are not in the city now," the merman declared
with certainty. "But they will come again."
"How do you know that?"
Sssuri's hand swept about to include the wealth around them. "They
have taken some, perhaps to them the most needful. But they will not
be able to resist gathering the rest. Surely they will return, perhaps
not once but many times. Until--"
"Until they come to stay." Dalgard was grim as he completed that
sentence for the other.
"That is what they will work for. This land was once under their
mastery. This world was theirs before they threw it away warring among
themselves. Yes, they dream of holding all once more. But"--Sssuri's
yellow eyes took on some of the fire which had shone in those of the
snake-devil during its last seconds of life--"that must not be so!"
"If they take the land, you have the sea," Dalgard pointed out. The
mermen had a means of escape. But what of his own clansmen? Large
families were unknown among the Terran colonists. In the little more
than a century they had been on this planet their numbers, from the
forty-five survivors of the voyage, had grown to only some two hundred
and fifty, of which only a hundred and twenty were old enough or young
enough to fight. And for them there was no retreat or hiding place.
"We do not go back to the depths!" There was stern determination in
that declaration from Sssuri. His tribe had been long hunted, and it
wasn't until they had made a loose alliance with the Terran colonists
that they had dared to leave the dangerous ocean depths, where they
were the prey of monsters more ferocious and cunning than any
snake-devil, to house their families in the coast caves and on the
small islands off-shore, to increase in numbers and develop new skills
of civilization. No, knowing the stubbornness which was bred into
their small, furry bodies, Dalgard did not believe that many of the
sea people would willingly go back into the sunless depths. They would
not surrender tamely to the rulership of the loathed race.
"I don't see," Dalgard spoke aloud, half to himself, as he studied the
tables closely packed, the machines standing on bases about the walls,
the wealth of alien technology, "what we can do to stop them."
The restriction drilled into him from early childhood, that the
knowledge of Those Others was not for his race and in some way
dangerous, gave him an uneasy feeling of guilt just to be standing
there. Danger, danger which was far worse than physical, lurked
there. And he could bring it to life by merely putting out his hand
and picking up any one of those fascinating objects which lay only
inches away. For the pull of curiosity was warring inside him against
the stern warnings of his Elders.
Once when Dalgard had been very small he had raided his father's trip
bag after the next to the last exploring journey the elder Nordis had
made. And he had found a clear block of some kind of greenish crystal,
in the heart of which threadlike lines of color wove patterns which
were utterly strange. When he had turned the block in his hand, those
lines had whirled and changed to form new and intricate designs. And
when he had watched them intently it had seemed that something
happened inside his mind and he knew, here and there, a word, a
fragment of alien thought--just as he normally communicated with the
cub who was Sssuri or the hoppers of the field. And his surprise had
been so great that he had gone running to his father with the cube and
the story of what happened when one watched it.
But there had been no praise for his discovery. Instead he had been
hurried off to the chamber where an old, old man, the son of the Great
Man who had planned to bring them across space, lay in his bed. And
Forken Kordov himself had talked to Dalgard in his old voice, a voice
as withered and thin as the hands crossed helplessly on his shrunken
body, explaining in simple, kindly words that the knowledge which lay
in the cubes, in the oddly shaped books which the Terrans sometimes
came across in the ruins, was not for them. That his own
great-grandfather Dard Nordis, who had been one of the first of the
mutant line of sensitives, had discovered that. And Dalgard, impressed
by Forken, by his father's concern, and by all the circumstances of
that day, had never forgotten nor lost that warning.
"_We_ cannot hope to stop them," Sssuri pointed out. "But we must
learn when they will come again and be waiting for them--with your
people and mine. For I tell you now, brother of the knife, they must
not be allowed to rise once more!"
"And how can we foretell their coming?" Dalgard wanted to know.
"Perhaps that alone we cannot do. But when they come they will not
leave speedily. They have stayed here before without harm, and their
distrust has been lulled. When next they come, it will be only
according to their natures that they will wish to stay longer. Not
snatching up the closest to hand of these treasures of theirs, but
choosing out with care those things which will give them the best
results. Therefore they may make a camp, and we can summon others to
aid us."
"To return to Homeport will take several days even if we push,"
pointed out the scout.
"Word can pass swifter than man," the merman returned, with confidence
in his own plan of action. "We shall put other eyes, other ears, many
eyes, many ears, to service for us. Be assured we are not the only
ones to fear the return of Those Others from overseas."
Dalgard caught his meaning. Yes, it would not be the first time the
hoppers and other small animals living in the grasslands, the runners
and even the moth birds that only the mermen could mind touch, would
relay a message across the land. It might not be an accurate
message--to transmit that by small animal brains was impossible--but
the meaning would reach both merman and colony Elders: trouble in the
north, help needed there. And since Dalgard was the only explorer at
present who had chosen the northern trails, his people would know that
he had sent that warning and would act upon it, as Sssuri's message
would in turn be heeded by the warriors of his tribe.
Yes, it could be done. But what of the traces they had left here--the
slaughtered snake-devils--?
Sssuri had an answer for that also. "Let them believe that one of my
race came here, or that a party of us ventured to explore inland. We
can make it appear that way. But they must not know of you. I do not
believe that they ever learned of you or how your fathers came from
the sky. And so that may swing the battle in our favor if it comes to
open warfare."
What the merman said was sensible enough, and Dalgard was willing to
obey orders. As he left the storehouse, Sssuri trailed him, scuffing
each dusty print the scout left. Perhaps a master of trailcraft could
unravel that spoor, but the colonist was ready to believe that no such
master existed in the ranks of Those Others.
In the outer hall the merman approached the now dead snake-devil and
jerked from its loose skin the arrow which had killed it. Loosing the
head of his ruined spear from his belt, he dug and gouged at the small
wound, tearing it so that its original nature was concealed forever.
Then they retraced their way through the underground passages until
they reached the sanded arena. Already insects buzzed hungrily about
the hulks of the dead monsters.
There was a shrill squeal as the remaining infant reptile fled from
the pouch where it had hidden. Sssuri hurled his knife, and the blade
caught the small devil above the shoulder line, half cutting, half
snapping its tender neck, so that it bounded aimlessly on to crash
against the wall and fall back squirming feebly.
They collected the darts which had killed the others. Dalgard took the
opportunity to study those bands on the forearms of the adults. To his
touch they had the slick smoothness of metal, yet he was unfamiliar
with the material. It possessed the ruddy fire of copper, but through
it ran small black veins. He would have liked to have taken one with
him for investigation, but it was out of the question to pry it off
that scaled limb.
Sssuri straightened up from his last gruesome bit of stage-setting
with a sigh of relief. "Go ahead." He pointed to one of the other
archways. "I will confuse the trail."
Dalgard obeyed, treading as lightly as he could, avoiding all
stretches in which he could leave a clear print. Sssuri ran lightly
back and forth mixing the few impressions to the best of his ability.
They backtracked to the river, retrieved the boat and recrossed, to
leave the city behind and strike into the open country beyond its
sinister walls. Night was falling, and Dalgard was very glad that he
was not to spend the time of darkness within those haunted buildings.
But he knew that it was more than a dislike for being shut up in the
alien dwellings which had brought Sssuri out into the fields. The
second part of their plan must be put into operation.
While Dalgard willed his body motionless, the merman lay relaxed upon
the ground before him as he might have floated upon his beloved waves
in some secluded cove. His brilliant eyes were closed. Yet Dalgard
knew that Sssuri was far from asleep, and with all his own power he
tried to join in the broadcast: that urgency which should send some
hopper, some night runner, on to spread the rumor that there was
trouble in the north, that danger existed and must be investigated.
They had already met one colony of runners ranging southward to
escape. But if they could send another such tribe traveling, arouse
and aim south a hopper exodus, the story would spread until the fringe
would reach the animals who lived in peace within touch of Homeport.
The sun was gone, the dark gathered fast. Dalgard could not even see
the clustered buildings of the city now. And since he lacked Sssuri's
range and staying power, he had no idea whether their efforts had met
with even a shadow of success. He shivered in the bite of the wind and
dared to lay his hand on Sssuri's shoulder, feeling anew the electric
shock of warmth and bursting life which was always there.
Having so broken the other's absorption he asked a question: "Would it
not be well, brother of the knife, if with the rising sun you returned
to the sea and struck out to join your tribesmen, leaving me here to
watch until you return?"
Sssuri's answer came with a speed which suggested that he, too, had
been considering that problem. "We shall see what happens with the
sun's rising. It is true that in the sea I can travel with greater
speed, that there are hunting parties of my people striking into these
waters. But they will not come to this city without good reason. It is
an accursed place."
With the early morning the city drew them once more. Dalgard's
curiosity pulled him to that storehouse. He could not stifle the hope
that with luck he might find something there which would solve their
problem for them. If there could only be a way to avoid open conflict
with Those Others, some solution whereby the aliens need never know of
the existence of the Colony. For so many generations, even centuries,
the aliens had been confined, or had confined themselves, safely
overseas on the western continent. Perhaps if now they were faced by
some new catastrophe, they would never attempt to come east again. He
had visions of discovering and activating some trap set to protect
their treasures which could be turned against them. But he realized
that he lacked the technical knowledge which would have aided him in
the search for such a weapon.
The remnants of Terran science and mechanics, which the outlaws had
brought with them from their native world, had been handed on; the
experiments they had managed since with crude equipment had been
carefully recorded, and he was acquainted with the outlines of most of
them. But the few destructive arms they had imported were long since
worn out or lacked charges, and they had not been able to duplicate
them. Just as they had torn asunder the ship in which they had crossed
space, to use its parts for the building of Homeport, so had they
hoarded all else they had brought. But they were limited by lack of
materials on Astra, and their fear of the knowledge of the aliens had
kept them from experimenting with things found in the ruins.
There might be hundreds of objects on the shelves of that storage
place, which, properly used, would reduce not only just the room and
its contents to glowing slag, but take half the city with it. But he
had no idea which, or which combination, would do it.
And here Sssuri could be no help. The mermen had made great strides
forward in biological and mental sciences, but mechanics was a closed
section of learning because of their enforced habitat under the sea,
and of machines they knew less than the colonists.
"I have been thinking--" Sssuri broke into his companion's chain of
reasoning, "of what we may do. And perhaps there is a way to reach the
sea more swiftly than by returning overland."
"Downriver? But you said that way may have its watching devices."
"Which would be centered on objects coming upstream, not down. But in
this city there should be yet another way--"
He did not enlarge upon that, but since he apparently knew what he was
doing, Dalgard let him play guide once more. They recrossed the
sluggish river, the scout looking into its murky depths with little
relish for it as a means of transportation. Though it had an oily,
flowing current, there was a suggestion of stagnant water with
unpleasant surprises waiting beneath its turgid surface.
For the second time they entered the arena. Avoiding the bodies,
Sssuri made a circuit of the sanded floor. He did not turn in at the
archway which led to the storage place, but paused before another as
if there lay what he had been searching for.
Dalgard's less sensitive nostrils picked up a new scent, the
not-to-be-missed fetor of damp underground ways where water stood.
The merman edged around a barred gate as Dalgard sniffed again. The
smell of damp was crossed by other and even less appetizing odors, but
he did not catch the stench of the snake-devils. And, relying on
Sssuri's judgment, he followed the merman into the dark.
Once again patches of violet light glimmered over their heads as the
passage narrowed and sloped downward. Dalgard tried to remember the
general geography of the section which was above them now. He had
assumed that this way with its dank chill must give on the river. But
when they had pattered on for a long distance, he knew that either
they had passed beneath the stream or that he was totally lost as to
direction.
As their eyes adjusted to the gloom of the passage the violet light
grew stronger. So Dalgard saw clearly when Sssuri whirled and faced
back along the way they had come, his body in a half crouch, his knife
ready in his hand.
Dalgard, his bow useless in the damp, drew his own sword-knife. But,
though his mind probed and he listened, he could sense or hear nothing
on their trail.
8