Night and the river rolled behind them. The moonlight became brighter,
but it was not at all like the moonlight Kieran remembered from long ago
and far away. That had had a cold tranquility to it, but this light was
neither cold nor tranquil. It seemed somehow to shift color, too, which
made it even less adequate for seeing than the white moonlight he was
used to. Sometimes as it filtered through the trees it seemed,
ice-green, and again it was reddish or amber, or blue.
They came to a place where the river made a wide bend and they cut
across it, clear of the trees. Paula touched Kieran's arm and pointed.
"Look."
Kieran looked, and then he stopped still. The light was not moonlight,
and its source was not a moon. It was a globular cluster of stars, hung
in the sky like a swarm of fiery bees, a burning and pulsing of many
colors, diamond-white and gold, green and crimson, peacock blue and
smoky umber. Kieran stared, and beside him Paula murmured, "I've been on
a lot of planets, but none of them have anything like this."
The people moved swiftly on, paying no attention at all to the sky.
Reluctantly Kieran followed them into the obscuring woods. He kept
looking at the open sky above the river, waiting for the cluster to rise
high so he could see it.
It was some time after this, but before the cluster rose clear of the
trees, that Kieran got the feeling that something, or someone, was
following them.
7.
He had stopped to catch his breath and shake an accumulation of sand out
of his boots. He was leaning against a tree with his back to the wind,
which meant that he was facing their back-trail, and he thought he saw a
shadow move where there was nothing to cast a shadow. He straightened up
with the little trip-hammers of alarm beating all over him, but he could
see nothing more. He thought he might have been mistaken. Just the same,
he ran to catch up with the others.
The people were moving steadily. Kieran knew that their senses were far
keener than his, and they were obviously not aware of any danger other
than the basic one of the Sakae. He decided that he must have been
seeing things.
But an uneasiness persisted. He dropped behind again, this time on
purpose, after they had passed a clearing. He stayed hidden behind a
tree-trunk and watched. The cluster-light was bright now but very
confusing to the eye. He heard a rustling that he did not think was
wind, and he thought that something started to cross the clearing and
then stopped, as though it had caught his scent.
Then he thought that he heard rustlings at both sides of the clearing,
stealthy sounds of stalking that closed in toward him. Only the wind, he
told himself, but again he turned to run. This time he met Paula, coming
back to look for him.
"Reed, are you all right?" she asked. He caught her arm and pulled her
around and made her run. "What is it? What's the matter?"
"I don't know." He hurried with her until he could see Webber ahead, and
beyond him the bare backs and blowing hair of the people. "Listen," he
said, "are there any predators here?"
"Yes," Paula said, and Webber turned sharply around.
"Have you seen something?"
"I don't know. I thought I did. I'm not sure."
"Where?"
"Behind us."
Webber made the harsh barking danger call, and the people stopped.
Webber stood looking back the way they had come. The women caught the
children and the men fell back to where Webber stood. They looked and
listened, sniffing the air. Kieran listened too, but now he did not hear
any rustlings except the high thrashing of the branches. Nothing stirred
visibly and the wind would carry away any warning scent.
The men turned away. The people moved on again. Webber shrugged.
"You must have been mistaken, Kieran."
"Maybe. Or maybe they just can't think beyond the elementary. If they
don't smell it, it isn't there. If something is after us it's coming
up-wind, the way any hunting animal works. A couple of the men ought to
circle around and--"
"Come on," said Webber wearily.
* * * * *
They followed the people beside the river. The cluster was high now, a
hive of suns reflected in the flowing water, a kaleidoscopic rippling of
colors.
Now the women were carrying the smaller children. The ones too large to
be carried were lagging behind a little. So were the aged. Not much,
yet. Kieran, conscious that he was weaker than the weakest of these,
looked ahead at the dim bulk of the mountains and thought that they
ought to be able to make it. He was not at all sure that he would.
The river made another bend. The trail lay across the bend, clear of the
trees. It was a wide bend, perhaps two miles across the neck. Ahead,
where the trail joined the river again, there was a rocky hill.
Something about the outlines of the hill seemed wrong to Kieran, but it
was too far away to be sure of anything. Overhead the cluster burned
gloriously. The people set out across the sand.