"But he could be a slave, a traitor, working for the Korins."
"Look at his clothes," said Jen. "Look at his skin. This morning it was
white, now it's red. Did you ever see a slave that color? Or a Korin,
either. Besides, did you ever see him in the valley before? There
aren't as many of us as that."
"We can't take any chances," Saul said. "Not us."
"You can always kill him later. But if he _is_ from beyond the
mountains, perhaps even from Earth--" She said the word hesitantly, as
though she did not quite believe there was such a place. "He might know
some of the things we've been made to forget. He might help us. Anyway,
the others have a right to their say before you kill him."
Saul shook his head. "I don't like it. But--" He hesitated, scowling
thoughtfully. "All right. We'll settle it up in the cave. Let's move."
He said to Trevor, "You go in the middle of us. And if you try to
signal anyone...."
"Who the devil would I signal to?" retorted Trevor angrily. "Listen,
I'm sorry I ever got into your bloody valley."
But he was not sorry. Not quite.
His senses were on the alert to mark every twist and turn of the
way they went, the way that would bring him back to the sun-stone.
The ravine narrowed and widened and twisted, but there was only one
negotiable path, and that was beside the stream bed. This went on for
some distance, and then the ravine split on a tremendous cliff of bare
rock that tilted up and back as though arrested in the act of falling
over. The stream flowed from the left-hand fork. Saul took the other
one.
They kept close watch on Trevor as he slipped and clambered and
sprawled along with them. The detritus of the primeval cataclysm that
had shaped this crack in the mountains lay where it had fallen, growing
rougher and more dangerous with every eroding storm and cracking frost.
Above him, on both sides, the mountain tops went up and still up,
beyond the shallow atmosphere. Their half-seen summits leaned and
quivered like things glimpsed from under water, lit like torches by the
naked blaze of the sun. There were ledges, lower down. Trevor saw men
crouched upon them, among heaps of piled stones. They shouted, and Saul
answered them. In this narrow throat no man could get through alive if
they chose to stop him.
After a while they left the floor of the ravine and climbed a path,
partly natural and partly so roughly hewn that it seemed natural. It
angled steeply up the cliff face, and at its end was a narrow hole.
Saul led the way through it. In single file the others followed, and
Trevor heard Jen's voice echoing in some great hollow space beyond,
calling Hugh.
There was a cave inside, a very large cave with dim nooks and crannies
around its edges. Shafts of sunlight pierced it here and there from
cracks in the cliff face high above, and far at the back of it, where
the floor tipped sharply down, a flame burned. Trevor had seen flames
like that before on Mercury, where volcanic gases blowing up through a
fissure had ignited from some chance spark. It was impressive, a small
bluish column twisting upward into rock-curtained distance and roaring
evilly. He could feel the air rush past him as the burning pillar
sucked it in.
There were people in the cave. Less than a hundred, Trevor thought, not
counting a handful of children and striplings. Less than a third of
those were women. They all bore the same unmistakable stamp. Hard as
life must be for them in the cave, it had been harder before.
He felt his legs buckling under him with sheer weariness. He stood
groggily with his back against the rough cave wall.
A stocky young man with knotted shoulder-muscles and sun-bleached hair
was holding Jen in his arms. That would be Hugh. He, and the others,
were shouting excitedly, asking and answering questions.
Then, one by one, they caught sight of Trevor. And gradually a silence
grew and spread.
"All right," said Saul harshly, looking at Trevor. "Let's get this
settled."
"You settle it," said Trevor. "I'm tired." He glared at Saul and the
unfriendly staring crowd, and they seemed to rock in his vision. "I'm
an Earthman. I didn't want to come into your damned valley, and I've
been here a night and a day and haven't slept. I'm going to sleep."
Saul started to speak again but Jen's man, Hugh, came up and stood in
front of him.
"He saved Jen's life," Hugh said. "Let him sleep."
He led Trevor away to a place at the side where there were heaps of
dried vines and mountain creepers, prickly and full of dust but softer
than the cave floor. Trevor managed a few vague words of thanks and was
asleep before they were out of his mouth.
Hours, weeks, or perhaps it was only minutes later, a rough persistent
shaking brought him to again. Faces bent over him. He saw them through
a haze, and the questions they asked penetrated to him slowly, and
without much meaning.
"Why did you want the sun-stone?"
"Why wouldn't I want it? I could take it back to Earth and sell it for
a fortune."
"What do they do with sun-stones on Earth?"
"Build gadgets, super-electronic, to study things. Wave-lengths too
short for anything else to pick up. Thought-waves, even. What do you
care?"
"Do they wear sun-stones in their foreheads, on Earth?"
"No...." His voice trailed off, and the voices, or the dream of voices,
left him.
It was still daylight when he woke, this time normally. He sat up,
feeling stiff and sore but otherwise rested. Jen came to him, smiling,
and thrust a chunk of what he recognized as some species of rock-lizard
into his hands. He gnawed at it wolfishly while she talked, having
discovered that this was not the same day, but the next one, and quite
late.
"They have decided," she said, "to let you live."
"I imagine you had a lot to do with that. Thanks."
She shrugged her bare shoulders, with the raw wounds on them where the
hawk-lizards had clawed her. She had that exhausted, let-down look that
comes after tremendous stress, and her eyes, even while she spoke to
Trevor, followed Hugh as he worked at some task around the cave.
"I couldn't have done anything if they hadn't believed your story,"
she told him. "They questioned you when you were too far gone to lie."
He had a very dim memory of that. "They didn't understand your answers
but they knew they were true ones. Also they examined your clothes. No
cloth like that is woven in the valley. And the things that hold them
together--" he knew she meant the zippers "--are unknown to us. So you
must have come from beyond the mountains. They want to know exactly
how, and if you could get back the same way."
"No," said Trevor, and explained. "Am I free to move around, then--go
where I want to?"
She studied him a moment before she spoke. "You're a stranger. You
don't belong with us. You could betray us to the Korins just as easily
as not."
"Why would I do that? They hunted me, too."
"For sun-stones, perhaps. You're a stranger. They would take you alive.
Anyway, be careful. Be very careful what you do."