arched through the air, brought down the ape. A pitting, snarling tangle
rolled across the slope--and was gone!
Asaki's hands shook as he drew them down his sweating face. Jellico
readied a second clip in the needler mechanically. But Tau was swaying
so that Dane leaped to take the shock of the other's weight as he
collapsed. Only for a moment did the medic hang so, then he struggled to
stand erect.
"Magic?" Jellico's voice, as controlled as ever, broke the silence.
"Mass hallucination," Tau corrected him. "Very strong."
"How!" Asaki swallowed and began again. "How was it done?"
The medic shook his head. "Not by the usual methods, that is certain.
And it worked on us--on me--when we weren't conditioned. I don't
understand that!"
Dane could hardly believe it yet. He watched Jellico stride to where the
tangle of struggling beasts had rolled, saw him examine bare ground on
which no trace of the fight remained. They must accept Tau's
explanation; it was the only sane one.
Asaki's features were suddenly convulsed with a rage so stark that Dane
realized how much a veneer was the painfully built civilization of
Khatka.
"_Lumbrilo!_" The Chief Ranger made of that name a curse. Then with a
visible effort he controlled his emotions and came to Tau, looming over
the slighter medic almost menacingly.
"How?" he demanded for the second time.
"I don't know."
"He will try again?"
"Not the same perhaps--"
But Asaki had already grasped the situation, was looking ahead.
"We shall not know," he breathed, "what is real, what is not."
"There is also this," Tau warned. "The unreal can kill the believer just
as quickly as the real!"
"That I know also. It has happened too many times lately. If we could
only find out how! Here are no drums, no singing--none of the tricks to
tangle a man's mind that he usually uses to summon his demons. So
without Lumbrilo, without his witch tools, how does he make us see what
is not?"
"That we must discover and speedily, sir. Or else we shall be lost among
the unreal and the real."
"You also have the power. You can save us!" Asaki protested.
Tau drew his arm across his face. Very little of the normal color had
returned to his thin, mobile features. He still leaned against Dane's
supporting arm.
"A man can do only so much, sir. To battle Lumbrilo on his own ground is
exhausting and I can not fight so very often."
"But will he not also be exhausted?"
"I wonder...." Tau gazed beyond the Khatkan to the barren ground where
leopard and rock ape had ceased to be. "This magic is a tricky thing,
sir. It builds and feeds upon a man's own imagination and inner fears.
Lumbrilo, having triggered ours, need not strive at all, but let us
ourselves raise that which will attack us."
"Drugs?" demanded Jellico.
Tau gave a start sufficient to take him out of Dane's loose hold. His
hand went to the packet of aid supplies which was his own care, his eyes
round with wonder and then shrewdly alert.
"Captain, we disinfected those thorn punctures of yours. Thorson, your
foot salve.... But, no, I didn't use anything--"
"You forget, Craig, we all had scratches after that fight with the
apes."
Tau sat down on the ground. With feverish haste he unsealed his medical
supplies, laid out some containers. Then delicately he opened each,
examined its contents closely by eye, by smell, and two by taste. When
he was done he shook his head.
"If these have been in any way meddled with, I would need laboratory
analysis to detect it. And I don't believe that Lumbrilo could hide
traces of his work so cleverly. Or has he been off-planet? Had much to
do with off-worlders?" he asked the Chief Ranger.
"By the nature of his position he is forbidden to space voyage, to have
any close relationship with any off-worlder. I do not think, medic, he
would choose your healing substances for his mischief. There would only
be chance to aid him then in producing the effects he wants. Though
there is often call for first aid in travel, he could not be _certain_
you would use any of your drugs on this trip to the preserve."
"And Lumbrilo _was_ certain. He threatened something such as this,"
Jellico reminded them.
"So it would be something which we would all use, which we had to depend
upon...."
"The water!" Dane had been holding his own canteen ready to drink. But
as that possible explanation dawned in his mind, he smelled instead of
tasted the liquid sloshing inside. There was no odor he could detect.
But he remembered Tau commenting on the powdered purifier pills at their
first camp.
"That's it!" Tau dug further into his kit, brought out the vial of white
powder with its grainy lumps. Pouring a little into the palm of his hand
he smelled it, touched it with the tip of his tongue. "Purifier and
something else," he reported. "It could be one of half a dozen drugs, or
some native stuff from here which we've never classified."
"True. There are drugs we have found here." Asaki scowled down at the
green mat of jungle. "So our water is poisoned?"
"Do you always purify it?" Tau asked the Chief Ranger. "Surely during
the centuries since your ancestors landed on Khatka you must have
adapted to native water. You couldn't have lived otherwise. We must use
the purifier, but must you?"
"There is water and water." Asaki shook his own canteen, his scowl
growing fiercer as the gurgle from its depths was heard. "From springs
on the other side of the mountains we drink--yes. But over here, this
close to the Mygra swamps, we have not done so. We may have to chance
it."
"Do you think we are literally poisoned?" Jellico bored directly to the
heart of their private fears.
"None of us have been drinking too heavily," Tau observed thoughtfully.
"And I don't believe Lumbrilo had outright killing in mind. How long the
effect will last I have no way of telling."
"If we saw one rock ape," Dane wondered, "why didn't we see others? And
why here and now?"
"That!" Tau pointed ahead on the trail Asaki had picked for their
ascent. For a long moment Dane could see nothing of any interest there
and then he located it--a finger of rock. It did not point directly
skyward this time, in fact it slanted so that its tip indicated their
back trail. Yet in outline the spire was very similar to that outcrop
from which the real rock ape had charged them the day before.
Asaki exclaimed in his own tongue and slapped his hand hard against the
stock of the needler.
"We saw that and so again we saw an ape also! Had earlier we been
charged by graz or jumped by a lion in such a place, then again we would
have been faced by graz or lion here!"
Captain Jellico gave a bark of laughter colored only by the most
sardonic humor. "Clever enough. He merely leaves it to us to select our
own ghost and then repeat the performance in the next proper setting. I
wonder how many rocks shaped like that one there are in these mountains?
And how long will a rock ape continue to pop out from behind each one we
do find?"
"Who knows? But as long as we drink this water we're going to continue
to have trouble; I feel safe in promising that," Tau replied. He put
the vial of doctored purifier into a separate pocket of his medical kit.
"It may be a problem of how long we can go without water."
"Perhaps," Asaki said softly. "Only not all the water on Khatka comes
running in streams."
"Fruit?" Tau asked.
"No, trees. Lumbrilo is not a hunter, nor could he be certain when and
where his magic would go to work. Unless the flitter was deliberately
sabotaged, he was planning for us to use our canteens in the preserve.
That is lion country and there are long distances between springs. This
is jungle below us and there is a source there I think we can safely
tap. But first I must find Nymani and prove to him that this is truly
deviltry of a sort, but not demon inspired."
He was gone, running lightly down-slope in the direction his hunter had
taken, and Dane spoke to Captain Jellico.
"What's this about water in trees, sir?"
"There is a species of tree here, not too common, with a thickened
trunk. It stores water during the rainy season to live on in the hot
months. Since we are in the transition period between rains, we could
tap it--if we locate one of the trees. How about that, Tau? Dare we
drink that without a purifier?"
"Probably a choice of two evils, sir. But we have had our preventive
shots. Personally, I'd rather battle disease than take a chance on a
mind-twisting drug. You can go without water just so long...."
"I'd like to have a little talk with Lumbrilo," remarked Jellico, the
mildness in his voice very deceptive.
"I'm _going_ to have a little talk with Lumbrilo, if and when we see him
again!" promised Tau.
"What are our chances, sir?" Dane asked. He screwed the cap back on his
canteen, his mouth feeling twice as dry since he knew he dared not
drink.
"Well, we've faced gambles before." Tau sealed the medical kit. "I'd
like to see one of those trees before sundown. And I don't want to face
another pointed rock today!"
"Why the leopard?" asked Jellico reflectively. "Another case of using
flame to fight fire? But Lumbrilo wasn't among those present to be
impressed."
Tau rubbed his hand across his forehead. "I don't really know, sir.
Maybe I could have made the ape vanish without a counter projection, but
I don't think so. With these hallucinations it is better to battle one
vision against another for the benefit of those involved. And I can't
even tell you why I selected a leopard--it just flashed into mind as
about the fastest and most deadly animal fighter I could recall at that
moment."
"You'd better work out a good list of such fighters." Jellico's grim
humor showed again. "I can supply a few if you need them. Not that I
don't share your hope we won't see any more trigger rocks. Here comes
Asaki with his wandering boy."
The Chief Ranger was half-leading, half-supporting his hunter, and
Nymani seemed only half-conscious. Tau got to his feet and hurried to
meet them. It would appear that their search for the water tree would be
delayed.
VI
They withdrew to a spot hacked from the edge of the jungle, leaving a
screen of green between them and the traitorous up-slope. But within the
few hours of daylight left them, it was proven that Asaki had been
overly optimistic in his hopes of discovering a water tree. They were
now in a narrow tongue of land between the range and the swamps, and
this territory was limited. Nymani, still shaken, was of little help,
and the spacemen did not dare to strike out into unexplored land alone.
So they mouthed dry concentrates and dared not drink. Dane was tempted
to pour out the liquid in his canteen. Water so close to hand was a
continual torment. And, now that they were away from the heights and the
possibility of more finger-shaped rocks, surely the threat in that
moisture was small in comparison to the needs of his body. Only that
caution which was drilled into every Free Trader supplied a brake to his
thirst.
Jellico drew the back of his hand across cracked lips. "Suppose we
should draw lots--some of us drink, one or two not. Could we manage that
way until we were over the mountains?"
"I wouldn't want to chance it, unless we are left with no other choice.
There is no way of telling how long the drug works. Frankly, right now
I'm not even sure I could detect a hallucination for very long under
these conditions," was Tau's discouraging verdict.
If any of them slept that night, they did so only in snatches. The
apprehension which had come with the previous night was back,
intensified, and that lurking, indefinable fear rode them hard.
They were shaken out of their private terrors shortly after dawn. There
were always sounds to be heard in the jungle: the cries of unseen birds,
the crash of some tree eaten alive by parasitic sapping. But what broke
now was no bird call, no isolated tree falling. A trumpeting roar, the
crackling smash of vegetation, heralded a real menace. Asaki spun to
face northward, though there was nothing to be seen there except the
unshaken wall of the jungle.
"Graz! Graz on stampede!" Nymani joined his superior.
Jellico arose swiftly and Dane read on the captain's face the
seriousness of this. The off-worlder turned to his own men with a sharp
order. "On your feet! We may have to move on the double. Up-mountain?"
he demanded of the Chief Ranger.
The other was still listening, not only with his ears but with the whole
of his tense body. Three of the deer-like creatures they had hunted for
food broke out of the green wall, fled past the men as if the latter was
invisible. And behind them, the hunted now and not the hunter, came a
lion, its strikingly marked black-and-white hide dramatic in the light
of the morning. It showed fangs in a snarl and then was gone in one huge
bound. More deer things, scurrying of other small creatures, moving too
fast for clear identification, and behind them the fury of destruction
which marked the headlong advance of Khatka's largest mammals slamming
through the jungle.
They had started up-slope when Nymani cried out. A white bulk, hard to
distinguish in that light against the gray of the earth, headed after
them. Dane had a fleeting glimpse of curled tusks, of an open mouth,
raw-red and wide enough to engulf his whole head, of shaggy legs driving
at an unbelievable pace. Asaki snapped a beam from the needler. The
white monster roared and came on. They dived for the scant cover offered
as the graz bull died, not two yards away from the Chief Ranger, its
heavy body skidding along the earth with the force of its speed as it
went down.
"That did it!" Jellico sighted coolly with his blaster as a second bull,
fighting mad, tore from the jungle and pounded at them. Behind it a
third tusked head thrust out of the brush, large eyes searched for an
enemy. Dane studied the dead bull, but the animal did not come to life
this time. These were not hallucinations. And the malignancy of the rock
apes, the cunning of the native Khatkan lion, were pallid things
compared to a graz herd on the rampage.
The second bull yelped with an almost canine complaint as Jellico's
blaster caught it head-on. Blinded, the beast blundered ahead, climbing
the mountain side. The third met a ray from Nymani's needler. But the
Chief Ranger leaped from behind his sheltering rock to the one where the
captain had taken refuge and pulled him into the open.
"They must not corner us here!"
Jellico agreed to that. "Come on!" he barked to Tau and Dane.
They fled along a rough way, trying to gain altitude, but finding a
rising cliff wall which could not be easily climbed. Two more graz went
down, one badly wounded, one safely dead. Behind them more white heads
came from the brush. What original cause had started the stampede the
fugitives could not guess, but now the fear and anger of the animals
were centering upon them.
And, in spite of their efforts, the party was being herded into a pocket
between the jungle below, where the main body of graz crashed along, and
a steep wall. Given time to find the necessary finger and toe holds, a
man might climb that wall, but they could not attempt it now. The
portion of ledge on which they ran, stopped to fire, and then ran on
again, angled to the southeast. And so they came to its end quickly, a
drop ending in a plain of yellow-gray mud studded with clumps of
bleached vegetation which led, like steppingstones, toward a tangle of
matted, sickly looking plants and reeds.
"All right," Tau faced around, "what do we do now? Space lift? And using
what for wings or jets?"
As if the graz could sense that they now had their victims safely
cornered, what must have been a goodly segment of the herd hooked their
way from the jungle and started up. Puffing, digging in those sturdy
legs which had to take the massive weight of their barrel-shaped bodies,
they made their way determinedly up-grade. One might almost believe that
they had intelligently planned this end for their drive.
"We go down!" Asaki yelled, and used his needler on the leader of that
climbing platoon.
"The brush islands," Nymani amended. "I show you!" He thrust his needler
at Jellico and was over the edge of the ledge, hanging by his hands and
swinging his weight back and forth like a pendulum. At the up-swing of
his body to the right, he let go and plunged out, landing half across
one of the reed islets. The Khatkan clawed his way to his knees, gained
his feet, and leaped for the next bit of solid ground.
"You, Thorson!" Jellico jerked his head at Dane and the younger spaceman
holstered his fire ray, slipped gingerly over the drop and prepared to
repeat Nymani's feat as best he could.
He was not quite as successful with his sidewise swing, landing with
only his forearms across the islet, the rest of his body being swiftly
embedded in what was ooze covered only with a thin crust of dried
matter. The stench of the stuff was sickening, but the fear of being
entrapped in it gave him the necessary impetus to push forward, though
what was meant to be a swift half-dive was more of a worm's progress. He
grabbed frantically at brittle stems, at coarse grass which cut like
knives at his hands. But some of the material held and he lay face down
on a lump which did not give under his weight.
There was no time to linger; he had to get to the next patch, to free
this dubious landing place for the men embattled on the rise above.
Stumbling up, Dane judged the distance with a space-trained eye and
jumped to a knob Nymani had already quitted. The Khatkan was more than
halfway along toward that promise of solid ground which the tangled mass
of leprous vegetation led to, zigzagging expertly from islet to islet.
There was a crash and a roar behind. Dane balanced on the third of the
minute islands to look back. He saw the lash of blaster fire on the top
of the cliff, Tau on his knees on the first of their chain of
steppingstones, and a graz sprawled head and forequarters in the sucking
muck where it had dived past the two defenders above. Needler and
blaster fired together again, and then Jellico swung over the cliff rim.
Tau waved vigorously and Dane took off for the next islet, just making
it by lucky chance.
The rest of the journey he took in a rush, trying not to think of
anything but the necessity of landing on some spot of firm ground. His
last leap of all was too short, so that he went knee deep in a
particularly evil-smelling pool where yellow scum spattered his breeches
and he experienced the insidious pull of the bottomless stuff. A stout
branch whipped across his shoulder and he caught it. With Nymani's wiry
strength on the other end, Dane worked free and sat, white-faced and
shivering, on a mat of brush, while the Khatkan hunter turned his
attention to the safety of Tau, the next arrival.
More fortunate, or more skillful than Dane, the medic made the hop from
the last tuft without mishap. But he was blowing heavily as he collapsed
beside the other spaceman. Together they watched the progress of their
captain.
Safe on the second tussock from the shore, Jellico halted, edged
carefully around and used the needler Nymani had left with him. A shaggy
head tossed and the bull fronting Asaki on the cliff went down. The
Chief Ranger dodged quickly to the right and a second beast rushed out
and over, to join its mired comrade in the swamp below. As Jellico shot
again, the Khatkan slung his needler and went over to gain the first
islet.
One more graz was wounded but luckily it hunched about, turning its
formidable tusks on those that followed, thus keeping the path clear for
its enemies. Jellico was making the journey, sure-footedly, with the
Chief Ranger only one hillock behind. Tau sighed.
"Someday maybe this will be just another tall tale and we'll all be
thought liars when we spout it," he observed. "That is if we survive to
tell it. So now which way do we go? If I had my choice it would be up!"
When Dane pulled himself to his feet and surveyed their small refuge, he
was ready to agree to that. For the space, packed with dead and dying
vegetable matter until one sank calf deep, was a triangle with a narrow
point running east into the swamp.
"They don't give up easily, do they?" Jellico looked back to the shore
and the cliff. Though the wounded graz bull still held the heights
against its fellows, there were others breaking from the jungle on the
lower level, wandering back and forth to paw the earth, rip up soil with
their tusks, and otherwise threaten anyone who would try to return to
the strip they patrolled.
"They will not," Asaki answered bleakly. "Arouse a graz and it will
trail you for days; kill any of the herd and you have little hope of
escaping them on foot."
It would seem now that the swamp was a deterrent to pursuit. The two
beasts that had fallen in the mire moaned in a pitiful rising note. They
had ceased to struggle and several of their kind clustered on the shore
near them, calling entreatingly. Asaki took careful aim with the needler
and put one animal after another out of its misery. But the flash of
those shots angered those on shore to a higher pitch of rage.
"No going back," he said. "At least not for several days."
Tau slapped a black, four-winged insect which had settled on his arm,
its jaws wide open for a sampling bite. "We can't very well perch here
until they forget all about us," he pointed out. "Not without water we
can trust, and with the local wild life ready to test us for tasty
eating."
Nymani had prowled along the swampward point of their island, and now he
made his report.
"There is more high land to the east. Perhaps it will give us a bridge
across."
At that moment Dane doubted his ability to make any more leaps from
island to island. And it would seem Tau shared his discouragement.
"I don't suppose you could discourage our friends on shore there with a
few more shots?"
Asaki shook his head. "We do not have clips enough to settle a whole
herd. These might retreat from sight but they would be waiting for us in
the bush, and that would mean certain death. We shall have to take the
swamp road."
If Dane had considered their earlier march misery, this was sheer
torture. Since footing was never secure, falls were frequent, and within
a quarter-hour they were all plastered with evil-smelling slime and mud
which hardened to rock consistency when exposed to the air. Painful as
this was, it did protect a portion of their bodies from the insects with
which the swamp was well stocked.
And, in spite of their efforts to find a way out, the only possible
paths led them deeper into the center of the unexplored morass. At last
Asaki called a halt and a council to consider retreat. To locate an
island from which they could at least watch the shore appealed very
strongly indeed.
"We have to have water." Tau's voice was a harsh croak, issuing out of a
mask of green mud festooned with trailing weeds.
"This ground is rising." Asaki smacked the stock of his needler against
the surface on which he crouched. "I think perhaps there may be clean
land soon to come."
Jellico hitched his way up a sapling, now bending under his weight.
Through the vision lenses he studied the route ahead.
"You're right about that," he called to the Chief Ranger. "There's a
showing of the right sort of green to the left, about half a mile on.
And," he glanced about at the westering sun, "we have about an hour yet
of good light in which to make it. I wouldn't try such a run after
dark."
That promise of green bolstered their weary spirits for a last
exhausting effort. Once again they were faced with a series of islet
leaps, and now they carried with them brush culled from the bigger
tussocks to aid in times of need.
When Dane scrambled up the last pull, staggered, and went down to his
knees again, he knew he was done. He did not even move at an excited cry
from Nymani, echoed a moment later by Asaki. It was not until the latter
leaned over him, a canteen open in his hand, that Dane aroused a little.
"Drink!" the Khatkan urged. "We have found a water tree. This is fresh."
The liquid might have been fresh, but it also had a peculiar taste,
which Dane did not note until he had gulped down a generous swallow. At
that moment he was past caring about anything but the fact that he did
have a portion of drinkable stuff in hand.
Here the stunted, unnatural growth of the swamplands had given away to
the more normal vegetation of the jungle-clad lowlands. Had they come
clear across the swamp, Dane wondered dully, or was this only a large
island in the midst of the stinking boglands?