"There may be another way out!" But Vye was already despondently sure
there was not. Those who had rigged this trap would leave no bolt
holes. But because they were human and refused to accept the
inevitable without a fight, the captives set off, not down into the
curve of the cup, but along its slope.
Tongues of brush and tree clumps brought about detours which forced
them slowly downward. They were well away from the crevice when Hume
halted, flung up a hand in silent warning. Vye listened, trying to
pick up the sound which had alarmed his companion.
It was as Vye strained to catch a betraying noise that he was first
conscious of what he did not hear. In the plains there had been
squeaking, humming, chitterings, the vocalizing of myriad grass
dwellers. Here, except for the sighing of the wind and a few insect
sounds--nothing. All inhabitants bigger than a Jumalan fly might have
long ago been routed out of the land.
"To the left." Hume faced about.
There was a heavy thicket there, too stoutly grown for anything to be
within its shadow. Whatever moved must be behind it.
Vye looked about him frantically for anything he could use as a
weapon. Then he grabbed at the long bush knife in Hume's belt sheath.
Eighteen inches of tri-fold steel gleamed wickedly, its hilt fitting
neatly into his fist as he held it point up, ready.
Hume advanced on the bush in small steps, and Vye circled to his left
a few paces behind. The Hunter was an expert with ray tube; that, too,
was part of the necessary skill of a safari leader. But Vye could
offer other help.
He shrugged out of the blanket pack he had been carrying on his back,
tossed that burden ahead.
Out of cover charged a streak of red, to land on the bait. Hume
blasted, was answered by a water-cat's high-pitched scream. The feline
writhed out of its life in a stench of scorched fur and flesh. As Vye
retrieved his clawed pack Hume stood over the dead animal.
"Odd." He reached down to grasp a still twitching foreleg, stretched
the body out with a sudden jerk.
It was a giant of its species, a male, larger than any he had seen.
But a second look showed him those ribs starting through mangy fur in
visible hoops, the skin tight over the skull, far too tight. The
water-cat had been close to death by starvation; its attack on the men
probably had been sparked by sheer desperation. A starving carnivore
in a land lacking the normal sounds of small birds and animal life, in
a valley used as a trap.
"No way out and no food." Vye fitted one thought to another out loud.
"Yes. Pin the enemy up, let them finish off one another."
"But why?" Vye demanded.
"Least trouble that way."
"There are plenty of water-cats down on the plains. All of them
couldn't be herded up here to finish each other off; it would take
years--centuries."
"This one's capture may have been only incidental, or done for the
purpose of keeping some type of machinery in working order," Hume
replied. "I don't believe this was arranged just to dispose of
water-cats."
"Suppose this was started a long time ago, and those who did it are
gone, so now it goes on working without any real intelligence behind
it. That could be the answer, couldn't it?"
"Some process triggers into action when a ship sets down on this
portion of Jumala, maybe when one planet's under certain conditions
only? Yes, that makes sense. Only why wasn't the first Patrol explorer
flaming in here caught? And the survey team--we were here for months,
cataloguing, mapping, not a whisper of any such trouble."
"That dead man--he's been here a long time. And when did the Largo
Drift disappear?"
"Five--six years ago. But I can't give you any answers. I have none."
* * * * *
It began as a low hum, hardly to be distinguished from the distant
howling of the wind. Then it slid up scale until the thin wail became
an ululating scream torturing the ears, dragging out of hiding those
fears of a man confronting the unknown in the dark.
Hume tugged at Vye, drew the other by force back into the brush.
Scratched, laced raw by the whip of branches, they stood in a small
hollow with the drift of leaves high about their ankles. And the
Hunter pulled into place the portions of growth they had dislodged in
their passage into the thicket's heart. Through gaps they could see
the opening where lay the body of the water-cat.
The wail was cut off short, that cessation in itself a warning. Vye's
body, touching earth with knee and hand as he crouched, picked up a
vibration. Whatever came towards them walked heavily.
Did the smell of death draw it now? Or had it trailed them from the
closed gate? Hume's breath hissed lightly between his teeth. He was
sighting the ray tube through a leaf gap.
A snuffling, heavier than a man's panting. A vast blot, which was
neither clearly paw nor hand, swept aside leaves and branches on the
other side of the small clearing, tearing them casually from the
shrubs.
What shuffled into the open might be a cousin of the blue beasts. But
where they had given only an impression of brutal menace, this was
savagery incarnate. Taller than Hume, but hunched forward in its
neckless outline, the thing was a monster. And over the round of the
lower jaw, tusks protruded in ugly promise.
Being carnivorous and hungry, it scooped up the body of the water-cat
and fed without any prolonged ceremony. Vye, remembering the crushed
spine of the human skeleton, was sickened.
Done, it reared on hind feet once again, the pear-shaped head swung in
their direction. Vye was half certain he had seen that tube-nose
expand to test the air and scent them.
Hume pressed the button of the ray tube. That soundless spear of death
struck in midsection of that barrel body. The thing howled, threw
itself in a mad forward rush at their bush. Hume snapped a second
blast at the head, and the fuzz covering it blackened.
Missing them by a precious foot, the creature crashed straight on
through the thicket, coming to its knees, writhing in a rising chorus
of howls. The men broke out of cover, raced into the open where they
took refuge behind a chimney of rock half detached from the parent
cliff. Down the slope the bushes were still wildly agitated.
"What was that?" Vye got out between sobbing breaths.
"Maybe a guardian, or a patrol stationed to dispose of any catch.
Probably not alone, either." Hume fingered his ray tube. "And I am
down to one full charge--just one."
Vye turned the knife he held around in his fingers, tried to imagine
how one could face up to one of those tusked monsters with only this
for a weapon. But if that thing had companions, none were coming in
answer to its dying wails. And after it had been quiet for a while
Hume motioned them out of hiding.
"From now on we'll keep to the open, better see trouble like that
before it arrives. And I want to find a place to hole up for the
night."
They trailed along the steep upper slope and in time found a place
where a now dried stream had once formed a falls. The empty
watercourse provided an overhang, not quite a cave, but shelter.
Gathering brush and stones, they made a barricade and settled behind
it to eat sparingly of their rations.
"Water--a whole lake of it down there. The worst of it is that a water
supply in a dry country is just where hunters congregate. That lake's
entirely walled in by woodland and provides cover for a thousand
ambushes."
"We might find a way out before our water bulbs fail," Vye offered.
Hume did not answer directly. "A man can live for quite a while on
very thin rations, and we have tablets from the flitter emergency
supplies. But he can't live long without water. We have two bulbs.
With stretching that is enough for two days--maybe three."
"We ought to get completely around the cliffs in another day."
"And if we do find a way out, which I doubt, we're still going to need
water for the trek out. It's right down there waiting until our need
is greater than either our fear or our cunning."
Vye moved impatiently, his blanket-clad shoulders scraping the rock at
their backs. "You don't think we have a chance!"
"We aren't dead. And as long as a man is breathing, and on his feet,
with all his wits in his skull, he always has a chance. I've blasted
off-world with odds stacked high on the other side of the board." He
flexed that plasta-flesh hand which was so nearly human and yet not by
the fraction which had changed the course of his life. "I've lived on
the edge of the big blackout for a long time now--after a while you
can get used to anything."
"One thing I would like--to get at the one who set this trap,"
commented Vye.
Hume laughed with dry humor. "After me, boy, after me. But I think we
might have to wait a long time for that meeting."
10
Vye crawled weakly from the area of a rock outcrop. The sun, reflected
from the cliff side, was a lash of fire across his emaciated body. His
swollen tongue moved a pebble back and forth in his dry mouth. He
stared dimly down the slope to that beckoning platter of water open
under the sun, rimmed with the deadly woodland.
What had happened? They had gone to sleep that first night under the
ledge of the dried waterfall. And all of the next day was only a haze
to him now. They must have moved on, though he could remember nothing,
save Hume's odd behavior--dull-eyed silence while stumbling on as a
brainless servio-robot, incoherent speech wherein all the words came
fast, running together unintelligibly. And for himself--patches of
blackout.
At some time they had come to the cave and Hume had collapsed, not
rousing in answer to any of Vye's struggles to awaken him. How long
they had been there Vye could not tell now. He had the fear of being
left alone in this place. With water perhaps Hume could be returned to
consciousness, but that was all gone.
Vye believed he could scent the lake, that every breeze up slope
brought its compelling enticement. Just in case Hume might awake to a
state of semi-consciousness and wander off, Vye tethered him with
blanket bonds.
Vye fingered Hume's knife, which had been painstakingly lashed to a
trimmed shaft of wood. Since he had emerged from that clouding of mind
which still gripped the Hunter, he had done what he could to prepare
for another attack from any roving beast. And he also had Hume's ray
tube--its single charge to be used only in dire need.
Water! His cracked lips moved, ejected the pebble. Their four empty
water bulbs were in the front of his blanket tunic, pressing against
his ribs. It was now--or die, because soon he would be too weak to
make the attempt at all. He darted for the first stand of bush
downhill.
As the brooding silence of the valley continued, he reached the edge
of the wood unhindered, intent on his mission with a concentration
which shut out everything save his need and the manner of satisfying
it.
He squatted in the bush, eyeing the length of woodland ahead. Then he
tried the only action he had been able to think out. That beast Hume
had killed had been too heavy to swing up in trees. But Vye's own
weight now did not prohibit that form of travel.
With spear and ray tube firmly attached to him, Vye climbed into the
first tree. A slim chance--but his only defense against a possible
ambush. A wild outward swing brought him, heart-thudding, to the next
set of limbs. Then he had a piece of luck, a looped vine tied together
a whole group of branches from one treetop to the next.
Hand grips, balance, sometimes a walk along a branch--he threaded
towards the lake. Then he came to a gap. With hands laced into
tendrils, Vye hunched to look down on a beaten ribbon of gray earth--a
trail well used by the evidence of its pounded surface.
That area had to be crossed on foot, but his passage through the brush
below would leave traces. Only--there was no other way. Vye checked
the lashings of his weapons again before leaping. Almost in the same
instant his sandals hit the packed earth he was running. His palms
skinned raw on rough bark as he somehow scrambled aloft once more.
No more vines, but broad limbs shooting well out. He dropped from one
to another-stopped for breath--listened.
The dark gloom of the wood was broken by sunlight. He was at the final
ring of trees. To get to the water he must descend again. A dead trunk
extended over the water. If he could run out on that and lower the
bulb, it could work.
Eerie silence. No flying things, no tree dwelling reptiles or animals,
no disturbance of any water creature on the unruffled surface of the
lake. Yet the sensation of life, inimical life, lurking in the depths
of the wood, under the water, bore in upon him.
Vye made the light leap to the bole of the dead tree, balanced out on
it over the water, moving slowly as the trunk settled a little under
his weight. He hunkered down, brought out the first bulb tied fast to
a blanket string.
The water of the river had been brown, opaque. But here the liquid was
not so cloudy. He could see snags of dead branches below its surface.
And something else!
Down in those turgid depths he made out a straight ridge running with
a trueness of line which could not be nature's unassisted product.
That ridge joined another in a squared corner. He leaned over,
strained his eyes to follow through the murk the farther extent of
those two ridges. Looked along both pointed protuberances aimed at the
surfaces of the lake, like fangs in an open jaw. Down there was
something--something artificially fashioned which might be the answer
to all their questions. But to venture into the lake himself--he could
not do it! If he could bring the Out-Hunter to his senses the other
might find the solution to this puzzle.
Vye filled his bulbs, working speedily, but still studying what he
could see of the strange erection under the lake. He thought it was
curiously free of silt, and its color, as far as he could distinguish,
allowing for the dark hue of the water, was light gray--perhaps even
white. He lowered his last bulb.
Down in the bleached forest of dead branches, well to one side of the
mysterious walls, there was movement, a slow rolling of a shadow so
hidden by a stirring of bottom mud that Vye could not make out its
true form. But it was rising to the bulb.
Vye hated to lose a single precious drop. Once he might have the luck
to make this journey unmolested, a second time the odds could be too
high.
A flash--the slowly rising shadow was transformed into a whizzing
spear of attack. Vye snapped the bulb out of the water just as a
nightmarish, armored head arose on a whiplash of coiled, scaled neck,
and a blunt nose thudded against the tree trunk with a hollow boom.
Vye clung to his perch as the thing flopped back into deeper water
from a froth of beaten foam, leaving a patch of odorous scum and slime
to bracelet the waterlogged wood.
He ran for the shelter of the trees to get away. This time there was
no rear, no thump of feet in warning. Out of the ground itself, or so
it seemed to Vye's startled terror, reared one of the tusked beasts.
To reach his tree and its dubious safety he had to wind past that
chimera. And the creature waited with a semblance of ease for him to
come to it.
Vye brought around his spear. The length of the haft might afford him
a fighting chance if he could send the point home in some vulnerable
spot. Yet he knew that the beasts were hard to kill.
The mouth opened in a wide grin of menace. Vye noted a telltale
tightening of shoulder muscles. It was going to rush for him now with
those clawed forepaws out to rip.
To wait was to court disaster. Vye shouted, his battle cry piercing
the silence of the lake and wood. He sprang, aiming the spear point at
the beast's protuberant belly, and then swerved to the side as the
knife bit home, raking his weapon to open a gaping wound.
The spear was jerked from Vye's hold as both those taloned paws closed
on it. Then the creature pulled it free, snapped the haft in two. Vye
fired a short blast from the ray tube before it could turn on him, saw
fur-fuzz afire, as he ran for the tree.
Beneath its branches he looked back. The beast was pawing at the
burning fur on its head, and he had perhaps a second or two. He jumped
and his fingers caught on the low hanging branch, then he made a
superhuman effort, was up out of the path of the thing which rushed
blindly for the tree, shrieking in frenzied complaint.
The huge body crashed against the trunk with force which nearly shook
Vye from his hold. As the giant forepaws belabored the wood, strove to
lift the body from the ground, Vye worked his way out on another
branch. In the end it was the shaking of that limb under him which
aided his swing to the next tree. And from there he traveled
recklessly, intent only on getting out of the woods as fast as he
could.
By the noise the beast was still assaulting the tree, and Vye marveled
at its vitality, for the belly wound would long ago have killed any
creature he knew. Whether it could trace his flight aloft, or whether
its howls would bring more of its kind, he could not guess, but every
second he could gain was all important now.
At the gap over the trail he hesitated. That path ran in the direction
of the open, and to go on foot meant the possibility of greater speed.
Vye slipped from the bough, hit the ground, and ran. His ragged
lungsful of air came in great gasps and he doubted if he could take
the exertion of more tree travel now. He raced down the path.
Those mewling cries were louder, he was sure of it. Now he heard the
thump of the beast's blundering pursuit behind him. But its bulk and
hurts slowed it. In the open he could find cover behind a rock, use
the ray again.
The trees began to thin. Vye summoned power for a last burst of speed,
came out of the shadow of the wood as might a dart expelled from a
needler. Before him, up slope, was the closed door of the valley. And
moving in from the left was another of the blue beasts.
He could not retreat to the trees. But the newcomer was moving with
the same ponderous self-confidence its fellow had shown earlier. Vye
dodged right, headed for the rocks by the gap. As he pulled himself
into that temporary fortification, the wounded beast dragged out of
the woods below. He thought it was blind, yet some instinct drove it
after him.
Shaking from fatigue, Vye steadied his forearm on the top of the rock,
brought up the ray tube. Less than two yards away now was the
deceptively open mouth of the gap. If he threw himself at that, would
the elasticity of the unseen curtain hurl him back into the claws of
the enemy?
He fired his blast at the head of the unwounded beast. It screeched,
threw out its arms, and one of those paws struck against its wounded
fellow. With a cry, that one flung itself at its companion in the
hunt, and they tangled in a body-to-body battle terrible in its utter
ferocity. Vye edged along the cliff determined to reach the cave and
Hume. And the two blue things seemed intent on finishing each other
off.
The one from the wood was done, the fangs of the other ripping out its
throat. Tearing viciously the victor made sure of its kill, then its
seared head came up, swung about to face Vye. He guessed it was aware
of his movements whether it could see or not.
But he was not prepared for the speed of its attacking lunge.
Heretofore the creatures had given the impression of brute strength
rather than agility. And he had been almost fatally deceived. He
jumped backwards, knowing he must elude that attack, for he could not
survive hand-to-hand combat with the alien thing.
There was a moment of dazed disorientation, a weird sensation of
falling through unstable space in which there had never been and never
would be firm footing again. He was rolling across rock--outside the
curtain of the gap.
He sat up, the feeling of being adrift in unmeasurable nothingness
making him sick, to watch mistily as the blue beast came to a halt.
Whimpering it turned, but before it reached the level of the woods, it
sagged to its knees, fell face forward and was still, a destructive
machine no longer controlled by life.
Vye tried to understand what had happened. He had somehow broken
through that barrier which made the valley a prison. For a moment all
that mattered was his freedom. Then he looked apprehensively behind
him along the road to the open, more than half expecting to see a
gathering of the globes, or of the less impressive lowland beasts that
acted as herders. But there was nothing.
Freedom! He dragged himself to his feet. Free to go! He slipped Hume's
ray tube back into his belt. Hume was still in the valley!
Vye rubbed his shaking hands across his face. Through the barrier and
free--but Hume was back there, without a weapon, defenseless against
any questing beast able to nose him out. Sickly, without water and
protection, he was a dead man even while he still breathed.
Keeping one hand against the wall of the gap in support, Vye started
to walk, not out of the gap towards the distant lowlands, but back
into the valley, forcing himself to that by his will alone and
screaming inside against such suicidal folly. He put out his hand
tentatively when he reached the two points of rock where that curtain
had hung. There was no obstruction--the barrier was down! He must get
back to Hume.
Still keeping his wall hold, Vye lurched through the gate, was once
more in the valley. He stood swaying, listening. But once again there
was silence, not even the wind moved through trees or bushes. Placing
one foot carefully before the other he went on towards Hume's cave.
The haze which had clouded his thinking processes since that first
morning's awakening in this bowl was gone now. Except for the physical
weakness that weighted his body, he felt once more entirely alive and
alert.
Wriggling in the cave's entrance was the Hunter. He had freed the
bonds Vye had put on his legs, but his hands were still tied. His
face, grimy, sweat-covered, was turned up to the sunlight, and his
eyes were again bright with reason.
Vye found the strength to run the last few feet between them. He was
fumbling with those ties about Hume's wrists as he blurted out the
news. The barrier was out--they could go.
Then he was bringing one of those precious bulbs, raising it to Hume's
eager mouth, squeezing a portion of its contents between the man's
cracked and bleeding lips.
Somehow they made that trip back to the valley gate. When they saw
their goal, Hume broke from Vye's hold, tottered forward with a cry
not far removed from a sob. He rebounded to slip full length to the
ground and lie there. Sobbing dryly, his gaunt face, eyes closed,
turned up to the sky. The trap had snapped shut once again.
"Why--why?" Vye found he was repeating the same words over and over,
his gaze blank, unfocussed, yet turned to the woods of the lake.
"Tell me what happened again."
Vye's head came around. Hume had pulled himself up so that his
shoulders rested against the rock wall. His plasta-hand was out-flung,
slipping up and down what seemed empty air, but which was the barrier
against freedom. And now his eyes seemed entirely sane.
Slowly, hesitating between words, Vye went over the full account of
his visit to the lake, his retreat before the beasts, his fortunate
stumble through the gap.
"But you came back."
Vye flushed. He was not going to try to explain that. Instead he said:
"If it went away once, it can again."
Hume did not press the subject of his return. Rather he fastened upon
the end of that action with the wounded beast, made Vye go through it
verbally a third time.
"There is just this," he said when the other was done. "When you fell
you were not thinking of the barrier at all--and your wits were
working again. You had come out of the daze we both had."
Vye tried to remember, decided that the Hunter was correct. He had
been trying to elude the charge of the beast, only, fear and that
desperate desire had occupied his mind at that moment. But what did
that signify?
To test just what he did not know, he crawled now to Hume's side, put
up his own hand to the space where the plasta-flesh palm slid back and
forth on nothingness. But he almost fell on his face, forward into the
gap. Where he had been expecting the resistance of the unseen curtain
there had been nothing at all! He turned to Hume with the expression
of a man who had been stunned by an unexpected blow.
11
"It is open for you!" Hume broke the quiet first. His eyes were very
bleak in his bony face.
Vye stood up, took one step and was on the other side of the curtain
where Hume's hand still found substance. He came back with the same
lack of hindrance. Yes, to him there was no longer a barrier. But
why--why him when Hume was still a prisoner?
The Hunter raised his head so his eyes could meet Vye's with the
authority of an order. "Go, get away while you can!"
Instead Vye dropped down beside the other. "Why?" he asked baldly. And
then the most obvious of all answers came.
He glanced at Hume. The Hunter's head lolled back against the rock
which supported him, his eyes were closed now, and he had the look of
a man who had been driven to the edge of endurance and was now willing
to relinquish his grip and let go.
Deliberately Vye brought up his right hand, balled his fingers into a
fist. And just as deliberately he struck home, square on the point of
that defenseless chin. Hume sagged, would have slipped down the
surface of the rock had Vye's hands not caught in his armpits.
Since he had not the strength left to get to his feet with such a
burden, Vye crawled, dragging the inert body of the Hunter with him.
And this time, as he had hoped, there was no resistance at the gap.
Unconscious, Hume was able to cross the barrier. Vye stretched him as
comfortably flat as he could, used a portion of their water on his
face until he moaned, muttered, and raised his hand feebly to his
head.
Then those gray eyes opened, focussed on Vye.
"What--"
"We're both through now, both of us!" The younger man saw Hume glance
around him with waking belief.
"But how--?"
"I knocked you out, that's how," Vye returned.
"Knocked me out? I crossed when I was unconscious!" Hume's voice
steadied, strengthened. "Let me see!" He rolled over on his side,
threw out his arm, and this time the hand found no wall. For him, too,
the barrier was gone.
"Once through, you are free," he added wonderingly. "Maybe they never
foresaw any escapes." He struggled up, sitting with his hands hanging
loosely between his knees.
Vye turned his head, looked down the trail. The length of distance
lying between them and the safari camp now faced them with a new
problem. Neither of them could make that trek on foot.
"We're out, but we aren't back--yet," Hume echoed his thought.
"I was wondering, if _this_ door is open--" Vye began.
"The flitter!" Again Hume's mind matched his. "Yes, if those globes
aren't hanging around just waiting for us to try."
"They might act only to get us here, not to keep us once we're in."
That might be wishful thinking, they wouldn't know until they tried to
prove it.
"Give me a hand." Hume held out his own, let Vye pull him to his feet.
Weak as he was, he was clear-eyed, plainly clear-headed once more.
"Let's go!"
Together they went back through the gap, then tested the absence of
the barrier once more, to make sure. Hume laughed. "At least the front
door remains open, even if we find the back one closed."
Vye left him sitting by that entrance while he made a quick trip to
the cave to pick up the small pack of supplies left them. When he
returned they crammed tablets into their mouths, drank feverishly of
the lake water, and, with the stimulation of the new energy, set off
along the cliff face.
"This wall in the lake," Hume asked suddenly, "you are sure it is
artificial?"
"Runs too straight to be anything else, and those projections are
evenly spaced. I don't see how it could be natural."
"We'll have to be sure."
Vye thought of that attacking water creature. "No diving in there," he
protested. Hume smiled, a stretch of skin far too tight over his jaw
now.
"Not us, at least not us now," he agreed. "But the Guild will send
another survey."
"What could be the reason for all this?" Vye helped his companion over
the loose debris of a cliff slide.
"Information."
"What?"
"Someone--or something--picked our brains while we were out of our
heads. Or--" Hume paused suddenly, looked directly at Vye. "I have a
vague feeling that you were able to keep going a lot better than I
was. That so?"
"Some of the time," Vye admitted.
"That checks. Part of me knew what was going on, but was helpless
while that other thing," his smile of moments earlier was wiped away,
there was a chill edge in his voice, "picked over my brains, sorted
out what it wanted."
Vye shook his head. "I didn't feel that way. Just thick-headed--as if
I were sleep walking and yet awake."
"So it took me over, but didn't go all the way with you. Why? Another
question for our list."
"Maybe--maybe Wass' techs fixed it so I couldn't be brain-picked, as
you call it," Vye offered.
Hume nodded. "Could be--would well be. Come on." He pressed the pace
now.
Vye turned to look down the slope suspiciously. Had Hume another
warning of menace out of the wood? He could sight no movement there.
And from this distance the lake was a topaz sheet of calm which could
hide anything. Hume was already several paces ahead, scrambling as if
the valley monsters were again on their track.
"What's the matter?" Vye demanded, as he caught up.
"Night coming." Which was true. Then Hume added, "If we can reach the
flitter before sunset, we'll have a chance to fly over the lake down
there, to make a taping of it before we go."
The energy of the tablets strengthened them so that by the time they
reached the crevice door they were moving with their former agility.
For a single second Hume hesitated before that slit, almost as if he
feared the test he must make. Then he stepped forward and this time
into freedom.
They reached the ledge where the flitter perched just as they had seen
it last. How long ago that had been they could not have told, but they
suspected that days of haze hung in between. Vye searched the sky. No
globes winking there--just the flyer alone.
He took his old seat behind the pilot, watched Hume test the relays
and responses in the quick run down of a man who has done this chore
many times before. But the other gave a little sigh of relief when he
finished.
"She's all right, we can lift."
Again they both looked aloft, half fearing to see those malignant
herders wink into being to forbid flight. But the sky was as serenely
clear of even a drifting cloud as they could hope. Hume pressed a
button and they arose vertically with an even progress totally unlike
the leap which had taken them out of Wass' camp.
Well above the cliff wall they hovered, and were able to see below the
round bowl of the valley prison. Hume touched controls, the flitter
descended slowly just above the center of the lake. And from this
position they were able to sight the other peculiarity of that body of
water, that it was perfectly oval in shape, far too perfect to be an
undeveloped product of nature. Hume took a round disk from his
equipment belt, fitted it carefully into a slot on the control board
and pressed the button below. Then he sent the flitter in a weaving
zigzag course well above the surface of the water, so that eventually
the flyer passed over every foot of its surface.
And from above, in spite of the turgid quality of the liquid, they
could see what did rest on the bottom of that oval. The wall with its
sharp corner which Vye had noted from shore level was only part of a
water covered erection. It made a design when seen from overhead, a
six-pointed star surrounding an oval and in the midst of that oval a
black blot which they could not identify.
Hume brought the flitter over in one last sweep. "That's it. We have a
full taping."
"What do you think it is?"
"A device set there by an intelligent being, and set a long time ago.
This valley wasn't arranged over night, six months ago--or even a year
ago. We'll have to let the experts tell us when and for what reason.
Now, let's head for home!"
He brought the flitter up and over the valley wall, flying southwest
so that they passed over the gap which was the main entrance to the
trap. And now he tried the com unit, endeavoring to pick up a signal
on which they could beam in for a safe ride.
"That's odd." Under Hume's control the direction finder passed back
and forth without bringing any answering code click from the mike. "We
may be too far in the mountains to pick up the beam. I wonder...." He
swept the needle in another direction, slightly to the left.
A crackle spat from the mike. Vye could not read code but the very
fury and intensity of that sound suggested panic--even terror.
"What's that?"