shipmates lay. It was some time before he was interested in much besides
the fact that he could drink when he wished. Then he watched Jellico
waver to his feet, his head turned eastward. Tau, too, sat up as if
alerted by the _Queen's_ alarm buzzer.
The Khatkans were gone, perhaps back to the water tree. But all three of
the spacemen heard that sound, a far off throbbing rhythm which was a
vibration as well. Jellico looked to Tau.
"Drums?"
"Could be." The medic screwed the cap back on his canteen. "I'd say we
have company--only I'd like to know what kind!"
They might have been mistaken about the drums, but none of them could
have been mistaken about the bolt which came out of nowhere to slice
through a tree trunk as a knife might slash wet clay. Blaster--and a
particular type of blaster!
"Patrol issue!" Tau lay flat, squeezing himself against the earth as if
he wished he could ooze into it.
Jellico wriggled toward the bush in answer to a low call from Asaki, and
the others made a worm's progress in his wake. Under cover they found
the Chief Ranger readying his needler.
"Poacher camp here," he explained bleakly. "And they know about us."
"A perfect end to a stinking day," remarked Tau dispassionately. "We
might have guessed something of this sort was waiting." He tried to rub
away some of the dried clay coating his chin. "But do poachers use
drums?"
The Chief Ranger scowled. "That is what Nymani has gone to find out."
VII
Darkness closed in while they waited for Nymani's return. There had been
no further attack from the blaster wielder; perhaps he was only trying
to pin them down where they were. Out over the swamp, weird patches of
phosphorescence moved in small ghostly clouds, and bright dots of
insects with their own built-in lighting systems flashed spark-fashion
or sailed serenely on regular flight plans. At night the wonder of the
place was far removed from the squalid reality of the day. They chewed
on their rations, drank sparingly of the water, and tried to keep alert
to any sight or sound.
That monotonous undertone, which might or might not be drums, continued
as a basic hum to the noises of the night, drowned out at intervals by a
splash, a mutter or cry from some swamp creature. Beside Dane, Jellico
stiffened, moved his blaster, as someone wriggled through the brush,
trilling softly.
"Off-worlders," Nymani reported in gasps to Asaki, "and outlaws, too.
They make a hunting sing--tomorrow they march for a killing."
Asaki rested his chin on his broad forearm. "Outlaws?"
"They show no lord's badge. But each I saw wears a bracelet of three,
five, or ten tails. They are Trackers indeed, and Hunters of the best!"
"They have huts?"
"Not so. There are no dwellers in the inners courts here." Out of habit
Nymani used the polite term for the women of his race. "I would say they
tarry only for the space of a hunt. And on the boots of one I saw salt
crust."
"Salt crust!" Asaki snapped and half arose. "So that is the type of lure
they use. There must be a saline mire near here to pull game--"
"How many off-worlders?" Jellico broke in.
"Three who are Hunters, one who is different."
"How different?" questioned Asaki.
"He wears upon his body garments which are strange; on his head a round
covering such as we see upon the off-worlders of the ships--"
"A spaceman!"
Asaki laughed harshly. "Why not? They must have some method of
transporting their hides."
"You can't tell me," Jellico returned, "that anyone is able to set a
ship down in this muck. It would simply be buried for all time."
"But, Captain, what type of a spaceport does a Free Trader need? Do you
not planet your own ship on worlds where there are no waiting cradles,
no fitter shops, none of the conveniences such as mark the field Combine
maintains on Xecho?"
"Of course I do. But one does need a reasonably smooth stretch of
territory, open enough so the tail flames won't start a forest fire. You
don't ever ride a tail push down in a swamp!"
"Which testifies to a trail out of here, fairly well-traveled, and some
kind of a usable landing space not too far away," Asaki replied. "And
that could very well serve us."
"But they know we are here," Tau pointed out.
It was Nymani's turn to laugh. "Man from the stars, there is no trail so
well-hidden that a Ranger of the preserves cannot nose it out, nor any
Hunter--be he a two or five bracelet veteran--who can keep pinned down a
determined man of the forest service!"
Dane lost interest in the argument at that moment. He was at the edge of
their line, the nearest to the swamp, and he had been watching patches
of ghostly light flitting above the rank water-weeds. For the past few
moments those wisps of faded radiance had been gathering into a growing
anthropomorphic blot hanging over the morass several yards away. And the
misty outlines were now assuming more concrete shape. He watched,
unable to believe in what he was seeing. At first the general outline,
non-defined as it was, made him think of a rock ape. But there were no
pointed ears above the round skull, no snout on the visage turned in
profile toward him.
More and more patches of swamp luminescence were drawn to that glowing
figure. What balanced there now, as if walking the treacherous surface
of the swampland, was no animal. It was a man, or the semblance of one,
a small, thin man--a man he had seen once before, on the terrace of
Asaki's mountain fortress.
The thing stood almost complete, its head cocked in what was an attitude
of listening.
"Lumbrilo!" Dane identified it, still knowing that the witch doctor
could not be standing there listening for them. But, to shake him still
farther, the head turned at his cry. Only there were no eyes, no
features on the white expanse which should have been a face. And somehow
that made the monster more menacing, convincing Dane against sane logic
that the thing _was_ spying on them.
"Demon!" That was Nymani; and over his sudden quaver, robbed of all the
confidence which had been there only moments earlier, came Asaki's
demand:
"What stands there, Medic? Tell us that!"
"A whip to drive us out of hiding, sir. As you know as well as I. If
Nymani spied upon them, then they have spied upon us in turn. And this,
I think, also answers another question. If there is a canker of trouble
on Khatka, then Lumbrilo is close to its root."
"Nymani!" The Chief Ranger's voice was the crack of a lash. "Will you
forget again that you are a man, and run crying for shelter against a
shaft of light? As this off-world Medic says, Lumbrilo fashions such as
that to drive us into our enemies' hands!"
The shadow thing in the swamp moved, putting its foot forward on surface
which would not bear the weight of a human body, taking a deliberate
step and then another, heading for the concealing brush where the
fugitives lay.
"Can you get rid of it, Tau?" Jellico asked in his usual crisp voice. He
might have been inquiring about some problem aboard the _Queen_.
"I'd rather get at the source." There was a grim note in the Medic's
reply. "And to do that I want to look at their camp."
"Well enough!" Asaki crept back in the brush.
The ghost of that which was not a man had reached the shore of the
island, stood there, its blank head turned toward them. Weird as it was,
now that the first shock of sighting it was over, the spacemen could
accept and dismiss it as they had not been so able to dismiss the
phantom rock ape.
"If that thing was sent to drive us," Dane ventured, "wouldn't we be
playing their game by going inland now?"
The Chief Ranger did not pause in his crawl to the left. "I think not.
They do not expect us to arrive with our wits about us. Panic-stricken
men are easy to pull down. This time Lumbrilo has overreached himself.
Had he not played that game with the rock ape, he might have been able
to stampede us now."
Though the white thing continued to move inland, it did not change
course to fall in behind them on the new route. Whatever it was, it did
not possess a mind.
There was a rustling, faint but distinguishable. Then Dane caught
Nymani's whisper.
"The one left to watch the inland trail does so no longer. We need not
fear an alarm from _him_. Also, here is another blaster for our use."
Away from the open by the swamp, the gloom was deeper. Dane was guided
only by the noises of the less-experienced Jellico and Tau made in their
progress.
They edged down into a small cut, floored with reeds and mud, where some
of the moisture from the soggy land about them gathered into a half
pool. Straight through this swale the Khatkans set course.
The drum beat grew louder. Now there was a glow against the dark--fire
ahead? Dane squirmed forward and at last gained a vantage point from
which to survey the poachers' camp.
There were shelters erected there, three of them, but they were mainly
roofs of leaves and branches. In two of them were stored bales of hides
sewn into plastic cloth, ready to ship. Before the third hut lounged
four off-worlders. And Nymani was very right; one of them wore ship's
uniform.
To the right of the fire was a ring of natives and another man, slightly
apart, who beat the drum. But of the witch doctor there was no sign. And
Dane, thinking of that mist-born thing at the swamp's edge, shivered. He
could believe Tau's explanation of the drug which produced
hallucinations back on the mountain side. But how that likeness
fashioned of phosphorescence had been sent by an absent man to hunt his
enemies was a eerie puzzle.
"Lumbrilo is not here." Nymani's thoughts must have been moving along
the same path.
Dane could hear movements in the dark beside him.
"There's a long-distance com unit in that third hut," Tau observed.
"So I see," Jellico snapped. "Could you reach your men over the mountain
with that, sir?"
"I do not know. But if Lumbrilo is not here, how can he make his image
walk the night?" the Chief Ranger demanded impatiently.
"We shall see. If Lumbrilo is not here--he shall come." And the promise
in Tau's tone was sure. "Those off-worlders will have to be out of
action first. And with that walking thing sent to drive us in, they must
be waiting for us."
"If they have sentries out, I will silence them!" promised Nymani.
"You have a plan?" Asaki's wide shoulders and upheld head showed for an
instant against the light from the camp.
"You want Lumbrilo," Tau replied. "Very well, sir, I believe I can give
him to you, and in the doing discredit him with your Khatkans. But not
with the off-worlders free to move."
The program was not going to be easy, Dane decided. Every one of the
poachers was armed with a Patrol blaster of the latest type, and a small
part of his mind speculated as to what would be the result of that
information conveyed to official quarters. Free Traders and Patrolmen
did not always see eye-to-eye over the proper action to be taken on the
galactic frontier. The _Queen's_ crew had had one such brush with
authority in the immediate past. But each realized that the other had an
important role in the general scheme of things, and if it came to a
clash between the law and outlaws, Free Traders fought beside the
Patrol.
"Why not give them what they expect--with reservations?" inquired
Jellico. "They've set us up to be stampeded into camp, flying ahead of
that tame ghost of theirs. Suppose we do stampede--after Nymani has
removed any sentries--stampede so well we sweep right over them? I want
to get at that com unit."
"You don't think they'll just mow us down as we come in?"
"You delivered a blow to Lumbrilo's pride; he won't be satisfied with
just your burning," the captain answered Tau, "not if I'm any judge of
character. And we'd furnish hostages of a sort--especially the Chief
Ranger. No, if they had wanted to kill us they would have shot us off
those islands when we came here. There would have been no playing around
with ghosts and goblins."
"There is reason in your words. And it is true they would like to have
me, those outlaws down there," Asaki commented. "I am of the Magawaya
and we have pressed always for stronger security methods to be used
against such as they. But I do not see how we can take the camp."
"We won't go in from the front--as they expect us to do. But a try from
the north, getting at the off-worlders first.... Three men causing
enough disturbance to cover operations of the other two...."
"So?" There was a moment of silence as the Chief Ranger evaluated that.
Then he added a few comments of his own.
"That off-worlder who wears spaceman's clothing, his weapon is not
drawn, though the others are ready. But I believe that you are right in
thinking they expect to be warned by sentries. Those we can see to.
Suppose then, Captain, you and I play the fear-crazed men running from
demons. Nymani will cover us from the dark and your two men--"
Tau spoke up, "Give me leave to flush out our other quarry, sir. I
believe I can keep him occupied. Dane, you'll take the drum."
"Drum?" With his mind on blasters, it was startling to be offered a
noise-maker.
"It's your business to get that drum. And when you get it I want you to
beat out 'Terra Bound.' You certainly can play that, can't you?"
"I don't understand," Dane began and then swallowed the rest of his
protest, knowing that Tau was not going to explain why he needed to have
the hackneyed popular song of the spaceways played in a Khatkan swamp.
As a Free Trader he had had quite a few odd jobs handed him during the
past couple of years, but this was the first time he had been ordered to
serve as a musician.
They waited for Nymani through dragging minutes. Surely those in the
camp would expect their arrival soon now? Dane's fire ray was in his
hand as he measured the distance to the drummer's stand.
"It is done," Nymani whispered from the darkness behind them. Jellico
and the Chief Ranger moved to the left; Tau crept to the right and Dane
pushed level with the medic.
"When they move," Tau's lips were beside his ear, "jump for that drum. I
don't care how you get it, but get it and keep it!"
"Yes, sir!"
There was a wailing cry from the north, a howl of witless fear. The
singers stopped in mid-note, the drummer paused, his hand uplifted. Dane
darted forward in a plunge which carried him to that man. The Khatkan
did not have time to rise from his knees as the barrel of the fire rod
struck his head, sending him spinning. Then the drum was cradled in the
spaceman's arm, close to his chest, his weapon aimed across it at the
startled natives.
The crackle of blaster fire, the shrill whine of needlers in action,
raised a bedlam from the other end of the camp. Backing up a little,
Dane went down on one knee, his weapon ready to sweep over the
bewildered natives, the drum resting on the earth against his body.
Keeping the fire rod steady, his left hand went to work, not in the
muted cadence the Khatkan drummer had chosen, but in hard and vigorous
thumps which rolled across the clamor of the fight. There was no
forgetting the beat of "Terra Bound" and he delivered it with force, so
that the familiar da-dah-da-da droned loud enough to awaken the whole
camp.
Dane's move appeared to completely baffle the Khatkan outlaws. They
stared at him, the whites of their eyes doubly noticeable in their dark
faces, their mouths a little agape. As usual the unexpected had driven
them off guard. He dared not look away from that gathering to see how
the fight at the other end of the camp was progressing. But he did see
Tau's advance.
The medic came into the light of the fire, not with his ordinary
loose-limbed spaceman's stride, but mincingly, with a dancing step, and
he was singing to the drum beat of "Terra Bound." Dane could not
understand the words, but he knew that they patterned in and out of the
drum beats, weaving a net between singer and listeners as Lumbrilo had
woven his net on the mountain terrace.
Tau had them! Had every one of the native outlaws ensnared, so that Dane
rested his weapon across his knee and took up the lower beat with the
fingers of his right hand as well.
_Da-dah-da-da_.... The innocuous repetitive refrain of the original song
which had been repeating itself in his mind faded, and somehow he
caught the menace in the new words Tau was mouthing.
Twice the medic shuffled about a circle of his own making. Then he
stooped, took a hunting knife from the belt of the nearest Khatkan and
held it point out toward the dark east. Dane would not have believed the
medic knew the drill he now displayed, for with no opponent save the
dancing firelight he fought a knife duel, feinting, striking, twisting,
retreating, attacking, all in time to the beat of the drum Dane was no
longer conscious of playing. And as he strove it was very easy to
picture another fighting against him. So that when the knife came up in
a vicious thrust which was the finish of his last attack, Dane stared
stupidly at the ground, half expecting to see a body lying there.
Once more Tau ceremoniously saluted with his blade to the east. Then he
laid it on the ground and stood astride its gleaming length.
"Lumbrilo!" His confident voice arose above the call of the drum.
"Lumbrilo--I am waiting."
VIII
Vaguely aware that the clamor at the other end of the camp had died
away, Dane muted the sound of his drum. Over its round top he could
watch the Khatkan outlaws; their heads bobbed and swayed in time to the
beat of his fingers. He, too, could feel the pull of Tau's voice. But
what would come in answer? That shadowy thing which had been loosed to
drive them here? Or the man himself?
To Dane, the ruddy light of the fire dimmed, yet there was no actual
dying of those flames which coiled and thrust around the wood. And the
acrid scent of burning was thick. How much of what followed was real,
how much the product of his tense nerves, Dane was never afterwards able
to tell. In fact, whether all the witnesses there saw the same sights
could be questioned. Did each man, Khatkan and off-worlder, see only
what his particular set of emotions and memories dictated?
Something swept in from the east, something which was not as tangible as
the creature born of swamp mist. Rather it came as an unseen menace to
the fire, and all that fire signifies to human kind--security,
comradeship, a weapon against the age-old forces of the dangerous night.
Was that threat, too, only in their minds? Or had Lumbrilo some power to
so shape his hatred?
The unseen was cold; it sapped a man's strength, bit at his brain,
weighted his hands and feet, weakened him. It strove to soften him into
clay another could remold. Nothingness, darkness, all that was opposed
to life and warmth and reality, arose in the night, gathered together
against them.
Yet still Tau fronted that invisible wave, his head high. And between
his sturdily planted feet the knife gleamed bright with a radiance of
its own.
"Ahhh--" Tau's voice curled out, to pierce that creeping menace. Then he
was singing again, the cadence of his unknown words rising a little
above the pattern wrought by the drum.
Dane forced his heavy hands to continue the beat, his wrists to rise and
fall in defiance of that which crept to eat their strength and make them
less then men.
"Lumbrilo! I, Tau, of another star, another sky, another world, bid you
come forth and range your power against mine!" Now there was a sharper
note in that demand, the snap of an order.
He was answered by another wave of the black negation--stronger, rolling
up to smash them down, as a wave in the heavy surf of a wild ocean
pounds its force against the beach. This time Dane thought he could see
that dark mass. He tore his eyes away before it took on substance,
concentrating on the movements of his hands against the drum head,
refusing to believe that hammer of power was rising to flatten them all.
He had heard Tau describe such things in the past. But told in familiar
quarters on board the _Queen_, such experiences were only stories. Here
was danger unleashed. Yet the medic stood unbowed as the wave broke upon
him in full.
And, advancing under the crest of that lick of destruction, came its
controller. This was no ghost drawn from the materials of the swamp;
this was a man, walking quietly, his hands as empty as Tau's, yet
grasping weapons none of them could see.
In the firelight, as the wave receded sullenly, men moaned, lay face
down upon the ground, beat their hands feebly against the earth. But, as
Lumbrilo came on from the shadows, one of them got to his hands and
knees, moving with small tortured jerks. He crawled toward Tau, his head
lolling on his shoulders as the head of the dead rock ape had done. Dane
patted the drum with one hand while, with the other, he groped for his
fire ray. He tried to shout in warning and found that he could not utter
a sound.
Tau's arm moved, raised from his side, made a circling motion.
The creeping man, his eyes rolled up in his head until only the whites
gleamed blindly in the limited light, followed that gesture. He drew
level with the medic, passed beyond toward Lumbrilo, whining as a hound
prevented from obeying his master might lament.
"So be it, Lumbrilo," Tau said. "This is between you and me. Or do you
not dare to risk your power against mine? Is Lumbrilo so weak a one that
he must send another to do his will?"
Raising both hands again the medic brought them down, curling inward,
until he stooped and touched them to the ground. When he straightened
once again the knife was in his grasp and he tossed it behind him.
The smoke from the fire swirled out in a long tongue, coiled about
Lumbrilo and was gone. A black and white beast stood where the man had
been, its tufted tail lashing, its muzzle a mask of snarling hate and
blood lust.
But Tau met that transformation with laughter which was like the lash of
a whip.
"We both be men, you and I, Lumbrilo. Meet me as a man and keep those
trickeries for those who have not the clear sight. A child plays as a
child, so--" Tau's voice came in a rumble, but Tau was gone. The huge,
hairy thing which swayed in his place turned a gorilla's beast visage to
his enemy. For a breathless moment Terran ape confronted Khatkan lion.
Then the spaceman was himself again. "The time for games is over, man of
Khatka. You have tried to hunt us to our deaths, have you not? Therefore
death shall be the portion of the loser now."
Lion vanished, man stood watching, alertly, as swordsman might face
swordsman with a blood feud lying on their blades. To Dane's eyes the
Khatkan made no move. Yet the fire leaped high, as if freshly fed, and
flames burst from the wood, flew into the air, red and perilous birds,
darting at Tau until they outlined him from the ground under his boots
to an arch over his head. They united and spun faster until Dane,
watching with dazzled eyes, saw the wheel become a blur of light, hiding
Tau within its fiery core. His own wrists ached with the strain of his
drumming as he lifted one hand and tried to shield his sight from the
glare of that pillar of fire.
Lumbrilo was chanting--a heavy blast of words. Dane stiffened; his
traitorous hands were falling into the rhythm of that other song!
Straightaway he raised both from the drum head, brought them down
in a discordinate series of thumps which bore no relation to either
the song Tau wanted or that which Lumbrilo was now crooning.
_Thump--thump--thump_--Dane beat it out frantically, belaboring the
drum head as he wanted to sink his fists home on the body of the
Khatkan witch doctor.
The pillar of fire swayed, fluttered as if a wind drove it--and was
gone. Tau, unmarked, smiled.
"Fire!" He pointed his fingers at Lumbrilo. "Would you try earth, and
water, and air also, wizard? Call hither your whirlwind, up your flood,
summon the land to quake. None of those shall bring me down!"
Shapes came flooding out of the night, some monstrous, some human,
streaming past Lumbrilo to crowd into the circle of firelight. Some Dane
thought he knew, some were strangers. Men wearing space uniforms, or the
dress of other worlds, women--they strode, wept, mingled with the
monsters to laugh, curse, threaten.