"It wasn't a picnic," Peer said. "But my kid brother Wilf and I had a
lot of fun anyway, just running around and teasing the ghouls. I guess
you don't notice so much what a place looks like when you're little."
"Teasing the what?"
"Ghouls," said Peer carelessly.
He looked at her suspiciously; but she seemed to be studying the nearby
terrain for a good spot to start digging.
"And what were Santis and your mother doing?" he inquired.
"They were looking for some sort of mineral deposit on Old Nameless; I
forget just what. How about that spot--just under that little overhang?
It looks like good, solid top-rock."
* * * * *
Channok agreed it was just the place. He'd got a drilling attachment
mounted to the _Asteroid's_ small all-purpose tractor; and now he
went back and ran the machine down the ramp from the storage lock.
He ordered Peer, who wanted to help, up a rock about twenty feet
overhead, where she perched looking like an indignant elf, out of
reach of any stray puffs of the drill-blast. Then he started running a
slanting, narrow tunnel down under the overhang.
Half an hour later, when he backed the tractor out of the tunnel,
pushing a pile of cooking slag behind him, he saw her standing up on
the rock with a small stun-gun in her hand. She beckoned to him.
Channok pulled off his breather-mask, shut off the tractor, and jumped
from the saddle.
"What is it?" he called anxiously, trotting towards her, while the
machine's clacking and roaring subsided.
"Some of those ghouls!" Peer called back. "Climb up here and I'll show
you." She didn't seem worried.
"They've ducked behind those rocks now," she said as he clambered up
beside her; "but they won't stay there long. They're curious, and I
think some of them remember the time we were here before."
"Are they dangerous?" he inquired, patting his holstered set of
heavy-duty Reaper guns.
"No," said Peer. "They look sort of awful, but you mustn't shoot them!
If they get inside of thirty feet I'll hit them in the stomach with a
stunner. They grunt then and run. Santis said that was the right way to
teach them not to get too nosey."
They waited a moment in silence, scanning the rocks.
Then Channok started violently.
"Holy !!**?** Satellites!" he swore, his hair bristling.
A big, dead-white shape had popped up springily on a rock about
fifty feet away, stared at him for an instant out of eyes like grey
glass-platters, and popped down out of sight again. Awful was right!
"Aha!" crew-member Peer gloated, grinning. "You shouldn't have said
that! Tonight you've got to let me soap out your mouth!"
A light dawned gradually.
"You did it on purpose!" he accused her. "You knew I'd say something
like that the first time I saw one!"
Peer didn't deny it.
"It's the soap for you, just the same!" she shrugged. "People ought to
have some self-control--that's what you said! Look, there's another one
now--no, two!"
V
When he came up for lunch, he found about fifty ghouls collected
around the area. By that time he had dug the cache, steel-lined it,
disinfected it and installed preservatives, a humidifier and a dowser
plate. Loading it up would take most of the rest of the day.
He avoided looking at the local population as much as he could while
he ate. However, the occasional glimpses he got suggested that the
Nameless System had made a half-hearted and badly botched attempt at
developing its own type of humanoid inhabitant. They had extremely
capable looking jaws, at any rate, and their wide, lipless mouths were
wreathed in perpetual idiot grins. The most completely disagreeable
parts of them, Channok decided, were the enormous, red-nailed hands and
feet. Like fat, white gargoyles, they sat perched around the tops of
the rocks in a wide circle and just stared.
"Sloppy-looking things," he remarked, noticing Peer's observant eyes on
him. "But at least they're not trying to strike up a conversation!"
"They never say anything until you hit them in the stomach with a
stunner," she informed him. "Then they just grunt and run."
"Sure they mightn't get mean about that? The smallest of this lot looks
plenty big enough to take us both apart."
Peer laughed. "All of them together wouldn't try it! They're real
yellow. Wilf got mad at a couple of 'em once and ran 'em halfway over
to the Mound before mother caught up with him and stopped him. Wilf had
his blood up, that time!"
"Maybe the ghouls built the Mound," Channok suggested. "Their
great-great-ancestors, anyway."
"They won't go near it now," Peer said, following-his gaze. "They're
scared of that, too!"
They studied the rugged, ungainly slopes of the huge artifact for a
moment. There was something fascinating about it, Channok thought.
Perhaps just its size.
"Santis said the plain was the bottom of a sea a while ago," Peer
offered. "So it could have been some sort of sea-things that built it."
"Any entrances into it?" he asked casually.
"Just one, right at the top."
"You know," he said, "I think I'd like to go over and have a look at
that thing before we leave."
"No!" said Peer, alarmed. "You'd better not. Santis said it was
dangerous--and there is something there! We saw a light one night."
"What kind of a light?"
"Like someone walking around the top of it, near that entrance, with
a big lamp in his hand," Peer remembered. "Like he might have been
looking for something."
"Sounds a bit like your old friend, the Space Ghost," Channok murmured
suspiciously.
"No," Peer grinned. "This was a _real_ light--and we took off the next
evening. Santis said it might be as well if we moved somewhere else for
a while."
Channok considered a moment. "Look," he said finally, "we can do it
like this. I'll jet myself over there and stroll around it a bit
in daylight; and if you're worried, you could hang overhead in the
_Asteroid_ with a couple of turrets out. Just in case someone gets
tough."
"I could, maybe," said Peer, in a tight voice, "but I'm not going to.
If you're going to go walking around there, after all Santis said, I'm
going to be walking right behind you!"
"Oh, no, you're not," Channok said.
"Oh, yes, I am!" said Peer. "You can't make me stay here!"
He looked at her in surprise. Her eyes were angry, but her lower lip
quivered.
"Hey," he said, startled. "Maybe I'm being a pig!"
"You sure are!" Peer said, relieved. The lip stopped quivering. "You're
not going over there, then?"
"Not if you feel that way about it," Channok said. He paused. "I
guess," he admitted awkwardly, "I just didn't like the idea of Santis
flitting around space, Holy Aynstyn knows where, and still putting in
his two millicredits worth every so often, through crew-member Peer!"
Peer blew her nose and considered in turn. "Just the same," she
concluded, "when Santis says something like that, it's a lot better if
people do it. Is 'Holy Aynstyn knows where' a swear-word?"
"No," said Channok. "Not exactly."
* * * * *
He'd finished his lunch and was just going to suggest they run the
tractor out of the cache and back the few hundred yards to the
_Asteroid_ for the first load of Santis' cargo, when he noticed that
all the ghouls had vanished.
He called Peer's attention to the fact.
"Uh-huh," she said in an absent-minded tone. "They do that
sometimes...."
Channok looked at her. She was staring at a high boulder a short
distance away, with a queer, intent expression, as if she were deep in
thought about something. He hoped she wasn't still brooding about their
little argument--
Then she glanced at him, gave him a sudden grin, swung herself around
and slid nimbly off the rock.
"Come on down quick!" she said. "I want to show you something before
you get back to work. A ghoul-burrow!"
"A ghoul-burrow?" Channok repeated unenthusiastically.
"Yes, sure!" said Peer impatiently. "They're cute! They're all lined
with glass or something." She spread her arms wide. "Jump, and I'll
catch you!"
Channok laughed, flopped over on his stomach with his legs over
the edge of the rock, and slid down in a fair imitation of Peer's
nonchalant style of descent, spraining his ankle only a little.
Well, he hadn't grown up skipping from craggy moon to asteroid to
heavy-planet to whatnot like she had....
They threaded their way about the rocks to the spot she had been
studying. She explained that he'd have to climb into the burrow to get
a good idea of what it was like.
"Well, look now, Peer!" Channok protested, staring into the big, round
hole that slanted downwards under a big boulder--it did seem to be
lined with black glass or some similar stuff. "That cave's got 'No
Trespassing' written all over it. Supposing I slide down a half a mile
and land in a mess of ghouls!"
"No, you won't," Peer said hurriedly. "It goes level right away, and
they're never more than thirty feet long. And the ghoul's out--there's
never more than one to a burrow; and I saw this one pop out and run off
just before we started here! You're not scared, are you? Wilf and I
crawled in and out of hundreds of them!"
"Well, just for a moment then," said Channok resignedly.
* * * * *
He got down on hands and knees and crept into the tunnel. After about
six feet, he stopped and found he could turn around without too much
trouble. "Peer?" he called back.
"Yes?" said Peer.
"How can I see anything here," Channok demanded peevishly, "when it's
all dark?"
"Well, you're in far enough now," said Peer, who had sat down before
the entrance of the tunnel and was looking in after him. "And now I've
got to ask you to do something! You know how I always promptly carry
out any orders you give me, like getting in my full sleep-period and
all?" she added anxiously.
"No, you do not!" Channok stated flatly, resting on his elbows. "Half
the time I practically have to drag you to the cabin. Anyway, what's
that got to do with--"
"It's like this," Peer said desperately. She glanced up for a moment,
as if she had caught sight of something in the dim red sky overhead.
"You've got to stay in there a while, Channy!"
"Eh?" said Channok.
"When those ghouls pop out of sight in daytime like that, it's because
there's a ship or something coming."
"Peer, are you crazy? A ship! Who--I'm coming right out!"
"Stay there, Channy! It's hanging over the _Asteroid_ right now. A big
lifeboat with its guns out--it must be those men from the _Ra-Twelve_!
They must have had a tracer of some sort on her!"
"Then get in here quick, Peer!" Channok choked, hauling out one of the
Reapers. "You know good and well that bunch would kill a woman as soon
as a man!"
"They've already seen me--I wanted them to," Peer informed him. She was
talking out of the side of her mouth, looking straight ahead of her,
away from the cave. "I'm not going to be a woman. I'm going to be a
dumb little girl, ordinary size. I can pull that one off any time!"
"But--"
"They'll want to ask questions. I think I can get them to send that
lifeboat away. We can't fight that, Channy; it's a regular armed
launch! Santis says you can always get the other side to split its
forces, if you're smart about it."
"But how--"
"And then, when I yell 'Here we go!' then you pop out. That'll be the
right moment--" She stood up suddenly. "We can't talk any more! They're
getting close--" She vanished with that from before the mouth of the
burrow.
"Hold on there!" a voice yelled in the distance a few seconds later,
as Channok came crawling clumsily up the glassy floor of the tunnel,
hampered by the Reaper he still clutched in one hand. It seemed to come
from up in the air, and it was using the Empire's universal dialect.
Peer's footsteps stopped abruptly.
"Who you people?" her voice screeched in shrill alarm. "You cops? I
ain't done nothing!"