To his great embarrassment, Shann found himself flushing. "I heard you,
the day you left for Headquarters," he admitted, and then added in his
own defense, "Probably half the camp did, too."
Thorvald's gathering frown flickered away. He gave a snort of laughter.
"Yes, I guess we did rather get to the bellowing point that morning. The
dreams--" he came back to the subject--"Yes, the dreams
were--are--important. We had their warning from the start. Lorry was the
First-In Scout who charted Warlock, and he is a good man. I guess I can
break secret now to tell you that his ship was equipped with a new
experimental device which recorded--well, you might call it an
"emanation"--a radiation so faint its source could not be traced. And it
registered whenever Lorry had one of those dreams. Unfortunately, the
machine was very new, very much in the untested stage, and its
performance when checked later in the lab was erratic enough so the
powers-that-be questioned all its readings. They produced a half dozen
answers to account for that tape, and Lorry only caught the recording as
long as he was on a big bay to the south.
"Then when two check flights came in later, carrying perfected machines
and getting no recordings, it was all written off as a mistake in the
first experiment. A planet such as Warlock is too big a find to throw
away when there was no proof of occupancy. And the settlement boys
rushed matters right along."
Shann recalled his own vivid dream of the skull-rock set in the lap of
water--this sea? And another small point fell into place to furnish the
beginning of a pattern. "I was asleep on the raft when I dreamed about
that skullmountain," he said slowly, wondering if he were making sense.
Thorvald's head came up with the alert stance of Taggi on a strong game
scent.
"Yes, on the raft you dreamed of a skull-rock. And I of a cavern with a
green veil. Both of us were on water--water which had an eventual
connection with the sea. Could water be a conductor? I wonder...." Once
again his hand went into his blouse. He crossed the strip of gravel
beach and dipped fingers into the water, letting the drops fall on the
carved disk he now held in his other hand.
"What are you doing?" Shann could see no purpose in that.
Thorvald did not answer. He had pressed wet hand to dry now, palm to
palm, the coin cupped tightly between them. He turned a quarter circle,
to face the still distant open sea.
"That way." He spoke with a new odd tonelessness.
Shann stared into the other's face. All the eager alertness of only a
moment earlier had been wiped away. Thorvald was no longer the man he
had known, but in some frightening way a husk, holding a quite different
personality. The younger Terran answered his fear with an attack from
the old days of rough in-fighting in the Dumps of Tyr. He brought his
right hand down hard in a sharp chop across the officer's wrists. The
bone coin spun to the sand and Thorvald stumbled, staggering forward a
step or two. Before he could recover balance Shann had stamped on the
medallion.
Thorvald whirled, his stunner drawn with a speed for which Shann gave
him high marks. But the younger man's own weapon was already out and
ready. And he talked--fast.
"That thing's dangerous! What did you do--what did it do to you?"
His demand got through to a Thorvald who was himself again.
"What was _I_ doing?" came a counter demand.
"You were acting like a mind-controlled."
Thorvald stared at him incredulously, then with a growing spark of
interest.
"The minute you dripped water on that thing you changed," Shann
continued.
Thorvald reholstered his stunner. "Yes," he mused, "why _did_ I want to
drip water on it? Something prompted me ..." He ran his still damp hand
up the angle of his jaw, across his forehead as if to relieve some pain
there. "What else did I do?"
"Faced to the sea and said 'that way,'" Shann replied promptly.
"And why did you move in to stop me?"
Shann shrugged. "When I first touched that thing I felt a shock. And
I've seen mind-controlled----" He could have bitten his tongue for
betraying that. The world of the mind-controlled was very far from the
life Thorvald and his kind knew.
"Very interesting," commented the other. "For one of so few years you
seem to have seen a lot, Lantee--and apparently remembered most of it.
But I would agree that you are right about this little plaything; it
carries a danger with it, being far less innocent than it looks." He
tore off one of the fluttering scraps of rag which now made up his
sleeve. "If you'll just remove your foot, we'll put it out of business
for now."
He proceeded to wrap the disk well in his bit of cloth, taking care not
to touch it again with his bare fingers while he stowed it away.
"I don't know what we have in this--a key to unlock a door, a trap to
catch the unwary. I can't guess how or why it works. But we can be
reasonably sure it's not just some carefree maiden's locket, nor the
equivalent of a credit to spend in the nearest bar. So it pointed me to
the sea, did it? Well, that much I am willing to allow. Maybe we'll be
able to return it to the owner, _after_ we learn who--or what--that
owner is."
Shann gazed down at the green water, opaque, not to be pierced to the
depths by human sight. Anything might lurk there. Suddenly the Throgs
became normal when balanced against an unknown living in the murky
depths of an aquatic world. Another attack on the Throg-held camp could
be well preferred to such exploration as Thorvald had in mind. Yet Shann
did not voice any protest as the Survey officer faced again in the same
direction as the disk had pointed him moments before.