"When I would strike at him, I could not!"
"A man with invisible protection and a gun," Jil-Lee took up the
argument. "How would you deal with him, younger brother?"
"I don't know," Travis admitted. Yet he also believed that if they
withdrew, left the Red here to be found by his own people, the enemy
would immediately begin an investigation of the southern country.
Perhaps, pushed by their need for learning more about the Apaches, they
would bring the helicopter in over the mountains. The answer to all
Apache dangers, for now, lay in the immediate future of this one man.
"He is hurt, he cannot go far on foot. And even if he calls the 'copter,
there is no landing place. He will have to move elsewhere to be picked
up." Travis thought aloud, citing the thin handful of points in their
favor.
Tsoay nodded toward the rim of the ravine. "Rocks up there and rocks can
roll. Start an earthslide...."
Something within Travis balked at that. From the first he had been
willing enough to slug it out with the Red, weapon to weapon, man to
man. Also, he had wanted to take a captive, not stand over a body. But
to use the nature of the country against the enemy, that was the oldest
Apache trick of all and one they would have to be forced to employ.
Nolan had already nodded in assent, and Tsoay and Jil-Lee started off.
Even if the Red did possess a protective wall device, could it operate
in full against a landslide? They all doubted that.
The Apaches reached the cliff rim without exposing themselves to the
enemy's fire. The Red still sat there calmly, his back against the rock,
his hands busy with his equipment as if he had all the time in the
world.
Then suddenly came a scream from more than one throat.
"_Dar-u-gar_!" The ancient war cry of the Mongol Hordes.
Then over the lip of the other slope rose a wave of men--their curved
swords out, a glazed set to their eyes--heading for the Amerindians with
utter disregard for any personal safety. Menlik in the lead, his
shaman's robe flapping wide below his belt like the wings of some
oversized predatory bird. Hulagur ... Jagatai ... men from the outlaws'
camp. And they were not striving to destroy their disabled overlord in
the vale below, but to wipe out the Apaches!
Only the fact that the Apaches were already sheltered behind the rocks
they were laboring to dislodge gave them a precious few moments of
grace. There was no time to use their bows. They could only use knives
to meet the swords of the Tatars, knives and the fact that they could
fight with unclouded minds.
"He has them under control!" Travis pawed at Jil-Lee's shoulder. "Get
him--they'll stop!"
He did not wait to see if the other Apache understood. Instead, he threw
the full force of his own body against the rock they had made the center
stone of their slide. It gave, rolled, carrying with it and before it
the rest of the piled rubble. Travis stumbled, fell flat, and then a
body thudded down upon him, and he was fighting for his life to keep a
blade from his throat. Around him were the shouts and cries of embroiled
warriors; then all was silenced by a roar from below.
Glazed eyes in a face only a foot from his own, the twisted, panting
mouth sending gusts of breath into his nostrils. Suddenly there was
reason back in those eyes, a bewilderment, which became fear ...
panic.... The Tatar's body twisted in Travis' hold, striving now not to
attack, but to win free. As the Apache loosened his grip the other
jerked away, so that for a moment or two they lay gasping, side by side.
Men sat up to look at men. There was a spreading stain down Jil-Lee's
side and one of the Tatars sprawled near him, both his hands on his
chest, coughing violently.
Menlik clawed at the trunk of a wind-twisted mountain tree, pulled
himself to his feet, and stood swaying as might a man long ill and
recovering from severe exertion.
Insensibly both sides drew apart, leaving a space between Tatar and
Apache. The faces of the Amerindians were grim, those of the Mongols
bewildered and then harsh as they eyed their late opponents with dawning
reason. What had begun in compulsion for the Tatars might well flare now
into rational combat--and from that to a campaign of extermination.
Travis was on his feet. He looked over the lip of the drop. The Red was
still in his place down there, a pile of rubble about him. His
protection must have failed, for his head was back at an unnatural angle
and the dent in his helmet could be easily seen.
"That one is dead--or helpless!" Travis cried out. "Do you still wish to
fight for him, Shaman?"
Menlik came away from the tree and walked to the edge of the drop. The
others, too, were moving forward. After the shaman looked down he
stooped, picked up a small stone, and flung it at the motionless Red.
There was a crack of sound. They all saw the tiny spurt of flame, a curl
of smoke from the plate on the Red's chest. Not only the man, but his
control was finished now.
A wolfish growl and two of the Tatars swung over, started down to the
Red. Menlik shouted and they slackened pace.
"We want that," he cried in English. "Perhaps so we can learn--"
"The learning is yours," Jil-Lee replied. "Just as this land is yours,
Shaman. But I warn you, from this day do not ride south!"
Menlik turned, the charms on his belt clicking. "So that is the way it
is to be, Apache?"
"That is the way it shall be, Tatar! We do not ride to war with allies
who may turn their knives against our backs because they are slaves to a
machine the enemy controls."
The Tatar's long, slender-fingered hands opened and closed. "You are a
wise man, Apache, but sometimes more than wisdom alone is needed----"
"We are wise men, Shaman, let it rest there," Jil-Lee replied somberly.
Already the Apaches were on their way, putting two cliff ridges behind
them before they halted to examine and cover their wounds.
"We go." Nolan's chin lifted, indicating the southern route. "Here we
do not come again; there is too much witchcraft in this place."
Travis stirred, saw that Jil-Lee was frowning at him.
"Go--?" he repeated.
"Yes, younger brother? You would continue to run with these who are
governed by a machine?"
"No. Only, eyes are needed on this side of the mountains."
"Why?" This time Jil-Lee was plainly on the side of the conservatives.
"We have now seen this machine at work. It is fortunate that the Red is
dead. He will carry no tales of us back to his people as you feared.
Thus, if we remain south from now on, we are safe. And this fight
between Tatar and Red is none of ours. What do you seek here?"
"I must go again to the place of the towers," Travis answered with the
truth. But his friends were facing him with heavy disapproval--now a
full row of Deklays.
"Did you not tell us that you felt this strange thing during the night
we waited about the camp? What if you become one with these Tatars and
are also controlled by the machine? Then you, too, can be made into a
weapon against us--your clansmen!" Jil-Lee was almost openly hostile.
Sense was on his side. But in Travis was this other desire of which he
was becoming more conscious by the minute. There was a reason for those
towers, perhaps a reason important enough for him to discover and run
the risk of angering his own people.
"There may be this--" Nolan's voice was remote and cold, "you may
already be a piece of this thing, bound to the machines. If so, we do
not want you among us."
There it was--an open hostility with more power behind it than Deklay's
motiveless disapproval had carried. Travis was troubled. The family, the
clan--they were important. If he took the wrong step now and was
outlawed from that tight fortress, then as an Apache he would indeed be
a lost man. In the past of his people there had been renegades from the
tribe--men such as the infamous Apache Kid who had killed and killed
again, not only white men but his own people. Wolf men living wolves'
lives in the hills. Travis was threatened with that. Yet--up the ladder
of civilization, down the ladder--why did this feverish curiosity ride
him so cruelly now?
"Listen," Jil-Lee, his side padded with bandages, stepped closer--"and
tell me, younger brother, what is it that you seek in these towers?"
"On another world there were secrets of the old ones to be found in such
ancient buildings. Here that might also be true."
"And among the secrets of those old ones," Nolan's voice was still
harsh--"were those which brought us to this world, is that not so?"
"Did any man drive you, Nolan, or you, Tsoay, or you, Jil-Lee, or any of
us, to promise to go beyond the stars? You were told what might be done,
and you were eager to try it. You were all volunteers!"
"Save for this voyage when we were told nothing," Jil-Lee answered,
cutting straight to the heart of the matter. "Yet, Nolan, I do not
believe that it is for more voyage tapes that our younger brother now
searches, nor would those do us any good--as our ship will not rise
again from here. What is it that you do seek?"
"Knowledge--weapons, maybe. Can we stand against these machines of the
Reds? Yet many of the devices they now use are taken from the star ships
they have looted through time. To every weapon there is a defense."
Nolan blinked and for the first time a hint of interest touched the mask
of his face. "To the bow, the rifle," he said softly, "to the rifle, the
machine gun, to the cannon, the big bomb. The defense can be far worse
than the first weapon. So you think that in these towers there may be
things which shall be to the Reds' machines as the bomb is to the cannon
of the Horse Soldiers?"
Travis had an inspiration. "Did not our people lay aside the bow for the
rifle when we went up against the Bluecoats?"
"We do not so go up against these Reds!" protested Lupe.
"Not now. But what if they come across the mountains, perhaps driving
the Tatars before them to do their fighting--?"
"And you believe that if you find weapons in these towers, you will know
how to use them?" Jil-Lee asked. "What will give you that knowledge,
younger brother?"
"I do not claim such knowledge," Travis countered. "But this much I do
have: Once I studied to be an archaeologist and I have seen other
storehouses of these star people. Who else among us can say as much as
that?"
"That is the truth," Jil-Lee acknowledged. "Also there is good sense in
this seeking out of the tower things. Let the Reds find such first--if
they exist at all--and then we may truly be caught in a box canyon with
only death at our heels."
"And you would go to these towers now?" Nolan demanded.
"I can cut across country and then rejoin you on the other side of the
pass!" The feeling of urgency which had been mounting in Travis was now
so demanding that he wanted to race ahead through the wilderness. He was
surprised when Jil-Lee put out his palm up as if to warn the younger
man.
"Take care, younger brother! This is not a lucky business. And remember,
if one goes too far down a wrong trail, there is sometimes no
returning--"
"We shall wait on the other side of the pass for one day," Nolan added.
"Then--" he shrugged--"where you go will be your own affair."
Travis did not understand that promise of trouble. He was already two
steps down his chosen path.
12
Travis had taken a direct cross route through the heights, but not
swiftly enough to reach his objective before nightfall. And he had no
wish to enter the tower valley by moonlight. In him two emotions now
warred. There was the urge to invade the towers, to discover their
secret, and flaring higher and higher the beginnings of a new fear. Was
he now a battlefield for the superstitions of his race reborn by the
Redax and his modern education in the Pinda-lick-o-yi world--half Apache
brave of the past, half modern archaeologist with a thirst for
knowledge? Or was the fear rooted more deeply and for another reason?
Travis crouched in a hollow, trying to understand what he felt. Why was
it suddenly so overwhelmingly important for him to investigate the
towers? If he only had the coyotes with him.... Why and where had they
gone?
He was alive to every noise out of the night, every scent the wind
carried to him. The night had its own life, just as the daylight hours
held theirs. Only a few of those sounds could he identify, even less did
he see. There was one wide-winged, huge flying thing which passed
across the green-gold plate of the nearer moon. It was so large that for
an instant Travis believed the helicopter had come. Then the wings
flapped, breaking the glide, and the creature merged in the shadows of
the night--a hunter large enough to be a serious threat, and one he had
never seen before.
Relying on his own small defense, the strewing of brittle sticks along
the only approach to the hollow, Travis dozed at intervals, his head
down on his forearm across his bent knees. But the cold cramped him and
he was glad to see the graying sky of pre-dawn. He swallowed two ration
tablets and a couple of mouthfuls of water from his canteen and started
on.
By sunup he had reached the ledge of the waterfall, and he hurried along
the ancient road at a pace which increased to a run the closer he drew
to the valley. Deliberately he slowed, his native caution now in
control, so that he was walking as he passed through the gateway into
the swirling mists which alternately exposed and veiled the towers.
There was no change in the scene from the time he had come there with
Kaydessa. But now, rising from a comfortable sprawl on the
yellow-and-green pavement, was a welcoming committee--Nalik'ideyu and
Naginlta showing no more excitement at his coming than if they had
parted only moments before.
Travis went down on one knee, holding out his hand to the female, who
had always been the more friendly. She advanced a step or two, touched a
cold nose to his knuckles, and whined.
"Why?" He voiced that one word, but behind it was a long list of
questions. Why had they left him? Why were they here where there was no
hunting? Why did they meet him now as if they had calmly expected his
return?
Travis glanced from the animals to the towers, those windows set in
diamond pattern. And again he was visited by the impression that he was
under observation. With the mist floating across those openings, it
would be easy for a lurker to watch him unseen.
He walked slowly on into the valley, his moccasins making no sound on
the pavement, but he could hear the faint click of the coyotes' claws as
they paced beside him, on each hand. The sun did not penetrate here,
making merely a gilt fog of the mist. As he approached within touching
distance of the first tower, it seemed to Travis that the mist was
curling about him; he could no longer see the archway through which he
had entered the valley.
"Naye'nezyani--Slayer of Monsters--give strength to the bow arm, to the
knife wrist!" Out of what long-buried memory did that ancient plea come?
Travis was hardly aware of the sense of the words until he spoke them
aloud. "You who wait--_shi inday to-dah ishan_--an Apache is not food
for you! I am Fox of the Itcatcudnde'yu--the Eagle People; and beside me
walk _ga'ns_ of power...."
Travis blinked and shook his head as one waking. Why had he spoken so,
using words and phrases which were not part of any modern speech?
He moved on, around the base of the first tower, to find no door, no
break in its surface below the second-story windows--to the next
structure and the next, until he had encircled all three. If he were to
enter any, he must find a way of reaching the lowest windows.
On he went to the other opening of the valley, the one which gave upon
the territory of the Tatar camp. But he did not sight any of the Mongols
as he hacked down a sapling, trimmed, and smoothed it into a
blunt-pointed lance. His sash-belt, torn into even strips and knotted
together, gave him a rope which he judged would be barely long enough
for his purpose.
Then Travis made a chancy cast for the lower window of the nearest
tower. On the second try the lance slipped in, and he gave a quick jerk,
jamming the lance as a bar across the opening. It was a frail ladder but
the best he could improvise. He climbed until the sill of the window was
within reach and he could pull himself up and over.
The sill was a wide one, at least a twenty-four-inch span between the
inner and outer surface of the tower. Travis sat there for a minute,
reluctant to enter. Near the end of his dangling scarf-rope the two
coyotes lay on the pavement, their heads up, their tongues lolling from
their mouths, their expressions ones of detached interest.
Perhaps it was the width of the outer wall that subdued the amount of
light in the room. The chamber was circular, and directly opposite him
was a second window, the lowest of the matching diamond pattern. He took
the four-foot drop from the sill to the floor but lingered in the light
as he surveyed every inch of the room. There were no furnishings at all,
but in the very center sank a well of darkness. A smooth pillar, glowing
faintly, rose from its core. Travis' adjusting eyes noted how the light
came in small ripples--green and purple, over a foundation shade of dark
blue.
The pillar seemed rooted below and it extended up through a similar
opening in the ceiling, providing the only possible exit up or down,
save for climbing from window to window outside. Travis moved slowly to
the well. Underfoot was a smooth surface overlaid with a velvet carpet
of dust which arose in languid puffs as he walked. Here and there he
sighted prints in the dust, strange triangular wedges which he thought
might possibly have been made by the claws of birds. But there were no
other footprints. This tower had been undisturbed for a long, long time.
He came to the well and looked down. There was dark there, dark in which
the pulsations of light from the pillar shown the stronger. But that
glow did not extend beyond the edge of the well through which the thick
rod threaded. Even by close examination he could detect no break in the
smooth surface of the pillar, nothing remotely resembling hand- or
footholds. If it did serve the purpose of a staircase, there were no
treads.
At last Travis put out his hand to touch the surface of the pillar. And
then he jerked back--to no effect. There was no breaking contact between
his fingers and an unknown material which had the sleekness of polished
metal but--and the thought made him slightly queasy--the warmth and very
slight give of flesh!
He summoned all his strength to pull free and could not. Not only did
that hold grip him, but his other hand and arm were being drawn to join
the first! Inside Travis primitive fears awoke full force, and he threw
back his head, voicing a cry of panic as wild as that of a hunting
beast.
An instant later, his left palm was as tight a prisoner as his right.
And with both hands so held, his whole body was suddenly snapped
forward, off the safe foundation of the floor, tight to the pillar.
In this position he was sucked down into the well. And while unable to
free himself from the pillar, he did slip along its length easily
enough. Travis shut his eyes in an involuntary protest against this
weird form of capture, and a shiver ran through his body as he continued
to descend.
After the first shock had subsided the Apache realized that he was not
truly falling at all. Had the pillar been horizontal instead of
vertical, he would have gauged its speed that of a walk. He passed
through two more room enclosures; he must already be below the level of
the valley floor outside. And he was still a prisoner of the pillar, now
in total darkness.
His feet came down against a level surface, and he guessed he must have
reached the end. Again he pulled back, arching his shoulders in a final
desperate attempt at escape, and stumbled away as he was released.
He came up sideways against a wall and stood there panting. The light,
which might have come from the pillar but which seemed more a part of
the very air, was bright enough to reveal that he was in a corridor
running into greater dark both right and left.
Travis took two strides back to the pillar, fitted his palms once again
to its surface, with no result. This time his flesh did not adhere and
there was no possible way for him to climb that slick pole. He could
only hope that at some point the corridor would give him access to the
surface. But which way to go--?
At last he chose the right-hand path and started along it, pausing every
few steps to listen. But there was no sound except the soft pad of his
own feet. The air was fresh enough, and he thought he could detect a
faint current coming toward him from some point ahead--perhaps an exit.
Instead, he came into a room and a small gasp of astonishment was wrung
out of him. The walls were blank, covered with the same ripples of
blue-purple-green light which colored the pillar. Just before him was a
table and behind it a bench, both carved from the native yellow-red
mountain rock. And there was no exit except the doorway in which he now
stood.
Travis walked to the bench. Immovable, it was placed so that whoever sat
there must face the opposite wall of the chamber with the table before
him. And on the table was an object Travis recognized immediately from
his voyage in the alien star ship, one of the reader-viewers through
which the involuntary explorers had learned what little they knew of the
older galactic civilization.
A reader--and beside it a box of tapes. Travis touched the edge of that
box gingerly, half expecting it to crumble into nothingness. This was a
place long deserted. Stone table, bench, the towers could survive
through centuries of abandonment, but these other objects....
The substance of the reader was firm under the film of dust; there was
less dust here than had been in the upper tower chamber. Hardly knowing
why, Travis threw one leg over the bench and sat down behind the table,
the reader before him, the box of tapes just beyond his hand.
He surveyed the walls and then looked away hurriedly. The rippling
colors caught at his eyes. He had a feeling that if he watched that ebb
and flow too long, he would be captured in some subtle web of
enchantment just as the Reds' machine had caught and held the Tatars. He
turned his attention to the reader. It was, he believed, much like the
one they had used on the ship.
This room, table, bench, had all been designed with a set purpose. And
that purpose--Travis' fingers rested on the box of tapes he could not
yet bring himself to open--that purpose was to use the reader, he would
swear to that. Tapes so left must have had a great importance for those
who left them. It was as if the whole valley was a trap to channel a
stranger into this underground chamber.
Travis snapped open the box, fed the first disk into the reader, and
applied his eyes to the vision tube at its apex.
The rippling walls looked just the same when he looked up once more, but
the cramp in his muscles told Travis that time had passed--perhaps hours
instead of minutes--since he had taken out the first disk. He cupped his
hands over his eyes and tried to think clearly. There had been sheets of
meaningless symbol writing, but also there had been many clear,
three-dimensional pictures, accompanied by a singsong commentary in an
alien tongue, seemingly voiced out of thin air. He had been stuffed with
ragged bits and patches of information, to be connected only by guesses,
and some wild guesses, too. But this much he did know--these towers had
been built by the bald spacemen, and they were highly important to that
vanished stellar civilization. The information in this room, as
disjointed as it had been for him, led to a treasure trove on Topaz
greater than he had dreamed.
Travis swayed on the bench. To know so much and yet so little! If Ashe
were only here, or some other of the project technicians! A treasure
such as Pandora's box had been, peril for one who opened it and did not
understand. The Apache studied the three walls of blue-purple-green in
turn and with new attention. There were ways through those walls; he was
fairly sure he could unlock at least one of them. But not now--certainly
not now!
And there was another thing he knew: The Reds must _not_ find this. Such
a discovery on their part would not only mean the end of his own people
on Topaz, but the end of Terra as well. This could be a new and alien
Black Death spread to destroy whole nations at a time!
If he could--much as his archaeologist's training would argue against
it--he would blot out this whole valley above and below ground. But
while the Reds might possess a means of such destruction, the Apaches
did not. No, he and his people must prevent its discovery by the enemy
by doing what he had seen as necessary from the first--wiping out the
Red leaders! And that must be done before they chanced upon the towers!
Travis arose stiffly. His eyes ached, his head felt stuffed with
pictures, hints, speculations. He wanted to get out, back into the open
air where perhaps the clean winds of the heights would blow some of
this frightening half knowledge from his benumbed mind. He lurched down
the corridor, puzzled now by the problem of getting back to the window
level.
Here, before him, was the pillar. Without hope, but still obeying some
buried instinct, Travis again set his hands to its surface. There was a
tug at his cramped arms; once more his body was sucked to the pillar.
This time he was rising!
He held his breath past the first level and then relaxed. The principle
of this weird form of transportation was entirely beyond his
understanding, but as long as it worked in reverse he didn't care to
find out. He reached the windowed chamber, but the sunlight had left it;
instead, the clean cut of moon sweep lay on the dusty floor. He must
have been hours in that underground place.
Travis pulled away from the embrace of the pillar. The bar of his wooden
lance was still across the window and he ran for it. To catch the
scouting party at the pass he must hurry. The report they would make to
the clan now had to be changed radically in the face of his new
discoveries. The Apaches dared not retreat southward and withdraw from
the fight, leaving the Reds to use what treasure lay here.
As he hit the pavement below he looked about for the coyotes. Then he
tried the mind call. But as mysteriously as they had met him in the
valley, so now were they gone again. And Travis had no time to hunt for
them. With a sigh, he began his race to the pass.
In the old days, Travis remembered, Apache warriors had been able to
cover forty-five or fifty miles a day on foot and over rough territory.
But perhaps his modern breeding had slowed him. He had been so sure he
could catch up before the others were through the pass. But he stood now
in the hollow where they had camped, read the sign of overturned stone
and bent twig left for him, and knew they would reach the rancheria and
report the decision Deklay and the others wanted before he could head
them off.
Travis slogged on. He was so tired now that only the drug from the
sustenance tablets he mouthed at intervals kept him going at a dogged
pace, hardly more than a swift walk. And always his mind was haunted by
fragments of pictures, pictures he had seen in the reader. The big bomb
had been the nightmare of his own world for so long, and what was that
against the forces the bald star rovers had been able to command?
He fell beside a stream and slept. There was sunshine about him as he
arose to stagger on. What day was this? How long had he sat in the tower
chamber? He was not sure of time any more. He only knew that he must
reach the rancheria, tell his story, somehow win over Deklay and the
other reactionaries to prove the necessity for invading the north in
force.
A rocky point which was a familiar landmark came into focus. He padded
on, his chest heaving, his breath whistling through parched, sun-cracked
lips. He did not know that his face was now a mask of driven resolution.
"Hahhhhhh--"
The cry reached his dulled ears. Travis lifted his head, saw the men
before him and tried to think what that show of weapons turned toward
him could mean.
A stone thudded to earth only inches before his feet, to be followed by
another. He wavered to a stop.
"_Ni'ilgac_--!"
Witch? Where was a witch? Travis shook his head. There was no witch.
"_Do ne'ilka da_'!"
The old death threat, but why--for whom?
Another stone, this one hitting him in the ribs with force enough to
send him reeling back and down. He tried to get up again, saw Deklay
grin widely and take aim--and at last Travis realized what was
happening.
Then there was a bursting pain in his head and he was falling--falling
into a well of black, this time with no pillar of blue to guide him.
13
The rasp of something wet and rough, persistent against his cheek;
Travis tried to turn his head to avoid the contact and was answered by a
burst of pain which trailed off into a giddiness, making him fear
another move, no matter how minor. He opened his eyes and saw the
pointed ears, the outline of a coyote head between him and a dull gray
sky, was able to recognize Nalik'ideyu.
A wetness other than that from the coyote's tongue slid down his
forehead now. The dull clouds overhead had released the first heavy rain
Travis had experienced since their landing on Topaz. He shivered as the
chill damp of his clothes made him aware that he must have been lying
out in the full force of the downpour for some time.
It was a struggle to get to his knees, but Nalik'ideyu mouthed a hold on
his shirt, tugging and pulling so that somehow he crept into a hollow
beneath the branches of a tree where the spouting water was lessened to
a few pattering drops.
There the Apache's strength deserted him again and he could only hunch
over, his bent knees against his chest, trying to endure the throbbing
misery in his head, the awful floating sensation which followed any
movement. Fighting against that, he tried to remember just what had
happened.
The meeting with Deklay and at least four or five others ... then the
Apache accusation of witchcraft, a serious thing in the old days. Old
days! To Deklay and his fellows, these _were_ the old days! And the
threat that Deklay or some other had shouted at him--"_Do ne'ilka
da'_"--meant literally: "It won't dawn for you--death!"
Stones, the last thing Travis remembered were the stones. Slowly his
hands went out to explore his body. There was more than one bruised area
on his shoulders and ribs, even on his thighs. He must still have been a
target after he had fallen under the stone which had knocked him
unconscious. Stoned ... outlawed! But why? Surely Deklay's hostility
could not have swept Buck, Jil-Lee, Tsoay, even Nolan, into agreeing to
that? Now he could not think straight.
Travis became aware of warmth, not only of warmth and the soft touch of
a furred body by his side, but a comforting communication of mind, a
feeling he had no words to describe adequately. Nalik'ideyu was sitting
crowded against him, her nose thrust up to rest on his shoulder. She
breathed in soft puffs which stirred the loose locks of his rain-damp
hair. And now he flung one arm about her, a gesture which brought a
whisper of answering whine.
He was past wondering about the actions of the coyotes, only supremely
thankful for Nalik'ideyu's present companionship. And a moment later
when her mate squeezed under the low loop of a branch and joined them
in this natural wickiup, Travis held out his other hand, drew it
lovingly across Naginlta's wet hide.
"Now what?" he asked aloud. Deklay could only have taken such a drastic
action with the majority of the clan solidly behind him. It could well
be that this reactionary was the new chief, this act of Travis'
expulsion merely adding to Deklay's growing prestige.
The shivering which had begun when Travis recovered consciousness, still
shook him at intervals. Back on Terra, like all the others in the team,
he had had every inoculation known to the space physicians, including
several experimental ones. But the cold virus could still practically
immobilize a man, and this was no time to give body room to chills and
fever.
Catching his breath as his movements touched to life the pain in one
bruise after another, Travis peeled off his soaked clothing, rubbed his
body dry with handfuls of last year's leaves culled from the thick
carpet under him, knowing there was nothing he could do until the
whirling in his head disappeared. So he burrowed into the leaves until
only his head was uncovered, and tried to sleep, the coyotes curling up
one on either side of his nest.
He dreamed but later could not remember any incident from those dreams,
save a certain frustration and fear. When he awoke, again to the sound
of steady rain, it was dark. He reached out--both coyotes were gone. His
head was clearer and suddenly he knew what must be done. As soon as his
body was strong enough, he, too, would return to instincts and customs
of the past. This situation was desperate enough for him to challenge
Deklay.
In the dark Travis frowned. He was slightly taller, and three or four
years younger than his enemy. But Deklay had the advantage in a stouter
build and longer reach. However, Travis was sure that in his present
life Deklay had never fought a duel--Apache fashion. And an Apache duel
was not a meeting anyone entered into lightly. Travis had the right to
enter the rancheria and deliver such a challenge. Then Deklay must meet
him or admit himself in the wrong. That part of it was simple.
But in the past such duels had just one end, a fatal one for at least
one of the fighters. If Travis took this trail, he must be prepared to
go the limit. And he didn't want to kill Deklay! There were too few of
them here on Topaz to make any loss less than a real catastrophe. While
he had no liking for Deklay, neither did he nurse any hatred. However,
he must challenge the other or remain a tribal outcast; and Travis had
no right to gamble with time and the future, not after what he had
learned in the tower. It might be his life and skill, or Deklay's,
against the blotting out of them all--and their home world into the
bargain.
First, he must locate the present camp of the clan. If Nolan's arguments
had counted, they would be heading south away from the pass. And to
follow would draw him farther from the tower valley. Travis' battered
face ached as he grinned bitterly. This was another time when a man
could wish he were two people, a scout on sentry duty at the valley, the
fighter heading in the opposite direction to have it out with Deklay.
But since he was merely one man he would have to gamble on time, one of
the trickiest risks of all.
Before dawn Nalik'ideyu returned, carrying with her a bird--or at least
birds must have been somewhere in the creature's ancestry, but the
present representative of its kind had only vestigial remnants of wings,
its trailing feet and legs well developed and far more powerful.
Travis skinned the corpse, automatically putting aside some spine quills
to feather future arrows. Then he ate slivers of dusky meat raw,
throwing the bones to Nalik'ideyu.
Though he was still stiff and sore, Travis was determined to be on his
way. He tried mind contact with the coyote, picturing the Apaches,
notably Deklay, as sharply as he could by mental image. And her assent
was clear in return. She and her mate were willing to lead him to the
tribe. He gave a light sigh of relief.
As he slogged on through the depressing drizzle, the Apache wondered
again why the coyotes had left him before and waited in the tower
valley. What link was there between the animals of Terra and the remains
of the long-ago empire of the stars? For he was certain it was not by
chance that Nalik'ideyu and Naginlta had lingered in that misty place.
He longed to communicate with them directly, to ask questions and be
answered.
Without their aid, Travis would never have been able to track the clan.
The drizzle alternated with slashing bursts of rain, torrential enough
to drive the trackers to the nearest cover. Overhead the sky was either
dull bronze or night black. Even the coyotes paced nose to ground, often
making wide casts for the trail while Travis waited.
The rain lasted for three days and nights, filling watercourses with
rapidly rising streams. Travis could only hope that the others were
having the same difficulty traveling that he was, perhaps the more so
since they were burdened with packs. The fact that they kept on meant
that they were determined to get as far from the northern mountains as
they could.
On the fourth morning the bronze of the clouds slowly thinned into the
usual gold, and the sun struck across hills where mist curled like steam
from a hundred bubbling pots. Travis relaxed in the welcome warmth,
feeling his shirt dry on his shoulders. It was still a waterlogged
terrain ahead which should continue to slow the clan. He had high
expectations of catching up with them soon, and now the worst of his
bruises had faded. His muscles were limber, and he had worked out his
plan as best he could.
Two hours later he sat in ambush, waiting for the scout who was walking
into his hands. Under the direction of the coyotes, Travis had circled
the line of march, come in ahead of the clan. Now he needed an emissary
to state his challenge, and the fact that the scout he was about to jump
was Manulito, one of Deklay's supporters, suited Travis' purpose
perfectly. He gathered his feet under him as the other came opposite,
and sprang.
The rush carried Manulito off his feet and face down on the sod while
Travis made the best of his advantage and pinned the wildly fighting man
under him. Had it been one of the older braves he might not have been so
successful, but Manulito was still a boy by Apache standards.
"Lie still!" Travis ordered. "Listen well--so you can say to Deklay the
words of the Fox!"
The frenzied struggles ceased. Manulito managed to wrench his head to
the left so he could see his captor. Travis loosened his grip, got to
his feet. Manulito sat up, his face darkly sullen, but he did not reach
for his knife.
"You will say this to Deklay: The Fox says he is a man of little sense
and less courage, preferring to throw stones rather than meet knife to
knife as does a warrior. If he thinks as a warrior, let him prove
it--his strength against my strength--after the ways of the People!"
Some of the sullenness left Manulito's expression. He was eager,
excited.
"You would duel with Deklay after the old custom?"
"I would. Say this to Deklay, openly so that all men may hear. Then
Deklay must also give answer openly."
Manulito flushed at that implication concerning his leader's courage,
and Travis knew that he would deliver the challenge openly. To keep his
hold on the clan the latter must accept it, and there would be an
audience of his people to witness the success or defeat of their new
chief and his policies.
As Manulito disappeared Travis summoned the coyotes, putting full effort
into getting across one message. Any tribe led by Deklay would be
hostile to the mutant animals. They must go into hiding, run free in the
wilderness if the gamble failed Travis. Now they withdrew into the
bushes but not out of reach of his mind.
He did not have too long to wait. First came Jil-Lee, Buck, Nolan,
Tsoay, Lupe--those who had been with him on the northern scout. Then the
others, the warriors first, the women making a half circle behind,
leaving a free space in which Deklay walked.
"I am the Fox," Travis stated. "And this one has named me witch and
_natdahe_, outlaw of the mountains. Therefore do I come to name names in
my turn. Hear me, People: This Deklay--he would walk among you as
_'izesnantan_, a great chief--but he does not have the _go'ndi_, the
holy power of a chief. For this Deklay is a fool, with a head filled by
nothing but his own wishes, not caring for his clan brothers. He says he
leads you into safety; I say he leads you into the worst danger any
living man can imagine--even in peyote dreams! He is one twisted in his
thoughts, and he would make you twisted also----"
Buck cut in sharply, hushing the murmur of the massed clan.
"These are bold words, Fox. Will you back them?"
Travis' hands were already peeling off his shirt. "I will back them," he
stated between set teeth. He had known since his awakening after the
stoning that this next move was the only one left for him to make. But
now that the testing of his action came, he could not be certain of the
outcome, of anything save that the final decision of this battle might
affect more than the fate of two men. He stripped, noting that Deklay
was doing the same.
Having stepped into the center of the glade, Nolan was using the point
of his knife to score a deep-ridged circle there. Naked except for his
moccasins, with only his knife in his hand, Travis took the two strides
which put him in the circle facing Deklay. He surveyed his opponent's
finely muscled body, realizing that his earlier estimate of Deklay's
probable advantages were close to the mark. In sheer strength the other
outmatched him. Whether Deklay was skillful with his knife was another
question, one which Travis would soon be able to answer.
They circled, eyes intent upon each move, striving to weigh and measure
each other's strengths and weaknesses. Knife dueling among the
Pinda-lick-o-yi, Travis remembered, had once been an art close to
finished swordplay, with two evenly matched fighters able to engage for
a long time without seriously marking each other. But this was a far
rougher and more deadly game, with none of the niceties of such a
meeting.
He evaded a vicious thrust from Deklay.
"The bull charges," he laughed. "And the Fox snaps!" By some incredible
stroke of good fortune, the point of his weapon actually grazed Deklay's
arm, drawing a thin, red inch-long line across the skin.
"Charge again, bull. Feel once more the Fox's teeth!"
He strove to goad Deklay into a crippling loss of temper, knowing how
the other could explode into violent rage. It was dangerous, that rage,
but it could also make a man blindly careless.
There was an inarticulate sound from Deklay, a dusky swelling in the
man's face. He spat, as might an enraged puma, and rushed at Travis who
did not quite manage to avoid the lunge, falling back with a smarting
slash across the ribs.
"The bull gores!" Deklay bellowed. "Horns toss the Fox!"
He rushed again, elated by the sight of the trickling wound on Travis'
side. But the slighter man slipped away.
Travis knew he must be careful in such evasions. One foot across the
ridged circle and he was finished as much as if Deklay's blade had found
its mark. Travis tried a thrust of his own, and his foot came down hard
on a sharp pebble. Through the sole of his moccasin pain shot upward,
caused him to stumble. Again the scarlet flame of a wound, down his
shoulder and forearm this time.
Well, there was one trick, he knew. Travis tossed the knife into the
air, caught it with his left hand. Deklay was now facing a left-handed
fighter and must adjust to that.
"Paw, bull, rattle your horns!" Travis cried. "The Fox still shows his
teeth!"
Deklay recovered from his instant of surprise. With a cry which was
indeed like the bellow of an old range bull, he rushed into grapple,
sure of his superior strength against a younger and already wounded man.
Travis ducked, one knee thumping the ground. He groped out with his
right hand, caught up a handful of earth, and flung it into the dusky
brown face. Again it seemed that luck was on his side. That handful
could not be as blinding as sand, but some bit of the shower landed in
Deklay's eye.
For a space of seconds Deklay was wide open--open for a blow which would
rip him up the middle, the blow Travis could not and would not deliver.
Instead, he took the offensive recklessly, springing straight for his
opponent. As the earth-grimed fingers of one hand clawed into Deklay's
face, he struck with the other, not with the point of the knife but with
its shaft. But Deklay, already only half conscious from the blow, had
his own chance. He fell to the ground, leaving his knife behind, two
inches of steel between Travis' ribs.
Somehow--he didn't know from where he drew that strength--Travis kept
his feet and took one step and then another, out of the circle until the
comforting brace of a tree trunk was against his bare back. Was he
finished--?
He fought to nurse his rags of consciousness. Had he summoned Buck with
his eyes? Or had the urgency of what he had to say reached somehow from
mind to mind? The other was at his side, but Travis put out a hand to
ward him off.
"Towers--" He struggled to keep his wits through the pain and billowing
weakness beginning to creep through him. "Reds mustn't get to the
towers! Worse than the bomb ... end us all!"
He had a hazy glimpse of Nolan and Jil-Lee closing in about him. The
desire to cough tore at him, but they had to know, to believe....
"Reds get to the towers--everything finished. Not only here ... maybe
back home too...."
Did he read comprehension on Buck's face? Would Nolan and Jil-Lee and
the rest believe him? Travis could not suppress the cough any longer,
and the ripping pain which followed was the worst he had ever
experienced. But still he kept his feet, tried to make them understand.
"Don't let them get to the towers. Find that storehouse!"
Travis stood away from the tree, reached out to Buck his earth and
bloodstained hand. "I swear ... truth ... this must be done!"
He was going down, and he had a queer thought that once he reached the
ground everything would end, not only for him but also for his mission.
Trying to see the faces of the men about him was like attempting to
identify the people in a dream.
"Towers!" He had meant to shout it, but he could not even hear for
himself that last word as he fell.
14
Travis' back was braced against blanketed packs as he steadied a piece
of light-yellow bark against one bent knee scowling at the lines drawn
on it in faint green.
"We are here then ... and the ship there--" His thumb was set on one
point of the crude map, forefinger on the other. Buck nodded.
"That is so. Tsoay, Eskelta, Kawaykle, they watch the trails. There is
the pass, two other ways men can come on foot. But who can watch the
air?"
"The Tatars say the Reds dare not bring the 'copter into the mountains.
After they first landed they lost a flyer in a tricky air-current flow
up there. They have only one left and won't risk it. If only they aren't
reinforced before we can move!" There it was again, that constant
gnawing fear of time, time shortening into a rope to strangle them all.
"You think that the knowledge of our ship will bring them into the
open?"
"That--or information about the towers would be the only things
important enough to pull out their experts. They could send a controlled
Tatar party to explore the ship, sure. But that wouldn't give them the
technical reports they need. No, I think if they knew a wrecked Western
Confederation ship was here, it would bring them--or enough of them to
lessen the odds. We have to catch them in the open. Otherwise, they can
hole up forever in that ship-fort of theirs."
"And just how do we let them know our ship is here? Send out another
scouting party and let them be trailed back?"
"That's our last resource." Travis continued to frown at the map. Yes,
it would be possible to let the Reds sight and trail an Apache party.
But there was none in the clan who were expendable. Surely there was
some other way of laying the trap with the wrecked ship for bait.
Capture one of the Reds, let him escape again, having seen what they
wanted him to see? Again a time-wasting business. And how long would
they have to wait and what risks would they take to pick up a Red
prisoner?
"If the Tatars were dependable...." Buck was thinking aloud.
But that "if" was far too big. They could not trust the Tatars. No
matter how much the Mongols wanted to aid in pulling down the Reds, as
long as they could be controlled by the caller they were useless. Or
were they?
"Thought of something?" Buck must have caught Travis' change of
expression.
"Suppose a Tatar saw our ship and then was picked up by a Red hunting
patrol and they got the information out of him?"
"Do you think any outlaw would volunteer to let himself be picked up
again? And if he did, wouldn't the Reds also be able to learn that he
had been set up for the trap?"
"An escaped prisoner?" Travis suggested.
Now Buck was plainly considering the possibilities of such a scheme. And
Travis' own spirits rose a little. The idea was full of holes, but it
could be worked out. Suppose they capture, say, Menlik, bring him here
as a prisoner, let him think they were about to kill him because of that
attack back in the foothills. Then let him escape, pursue him northward
to a point where he could be driven into the hands of the Reds? Very
chancy, but it just might work. Travis was favoring a gamble now, since
his desperate one with the duel had paid off.
The risk he had accepted then had cost him two deep wounds, one of which
might have been serious if Jil-Lee's project-sponsored medical training
had not been to hand. But it had also made Travis one of the clan again,
with his people willing to listen to his warning concerning the tower
treasury.
"The girl--the Tatar girl!"
At first Travis did not understand Buck's ejaculation.
"We get the girl," the other elaborated, "let her escape, then hunt her
to where they'll pick her up. Might even imprison her in the ship to
begin with."
Kaydessa? Though something within him rebelled at that selection for the
leading role in their drama, Travis could see the advantage of Buck's
choice. Woman-stealing was an ancient pastime among primitive cultures.
The Tatars themselves had found wives that way in the past, just as the
Apache raiders of old had taken captive women into their wickiups. Yes,
for raiders to steal a woman would be a natural act, accepted as such
by the Reds. For the same woman to endeavor to escape and be hunted by
her captors also was reasonable. And for such a woman, cut off from her
outlaw kin, to eventually head back toward the Red settlement as the
only hope of evading her enemies--logical all the way!
"She would have to be well frightened," Travis observed with reluctance.
"That can be done for us--"
Travis glanced at Buck with sharp annoyance. He would not allow certain
games out of their common past to be played with Kaydessa. But Buck had
something very different from old-time brutality in mind.
"Three days ago, while you were still flat on your back, Deklay and I
went back to the ship--"
"Deklay?"
"You beat him openly, so he must restore his honor in his own sight. And
the council has forbidden another duel or challenge," Buck replied.
"Therefore he will continue to push for recognition in another way. And
now that he has heard your story and knows we must face the Reds, not
run from them, he is eager to take the war trail--too eager. So we
returned to the ship to make another search for weapons----"
"There were none there before except those we had...."
"Nor now either. But we discovered something else." Buck paused and
Travis was shaken out of his absorption with the problem at hand by a
note in the other's voice. It was as if Buck had come upon something he
could not summon the right words to describe.
"First," Buck continued, "there was this dead thing there, near where
we found Dr. Ruthven. It was something like a man ... but all silvery
hair----"
"The ape-things! The ape-things from the other worlds! What else did you
see?" Travis had dropped the map. His side gave him a painful twinge as
he caught at Buck's sleeve. The bald space rovers--did they still exist
here somewhere? Had they come to explore the ship built on the pattern
of their own but manned by Terrans?
"Nothing except tracks, a lot of them, in every open cabin and hole. I
think there must have been a sizable pack of the things."
"What killed the dead one?"
Buck wet his lips. "I think--fear...." His voice dropped a little,
almost apologetically, and Travis stared.
"The ship is changed. Inside, there is something wrong. When you walk
the corridors your skin crawls, you think there is something behind you.
You hear things, see things from the corners of your eyes.... When you
turn, there's nothing, nothing at all! And the higher you climb into the
ship, the worse it is. I tell you, Travis, never have I felt anything
like it before!"
"It was a ship of many dead," Travis reminded him. Had the age-old
Apache fear of the dead been activated by the Redax into an acute
phobia--to strike down such a level-headed man as Buck?
"No, at first that, too, was my thought. Then I discovered that it was
worst not near that chamber where we lay our dead, but higher, in the
Redax cabin. I think perhaps the machine is still running, but running
in a wrong way--so that it does not awaken old memories of our
ancestors now, but brings into being all the fears which have ever
haunted us through the dark of the ages. I tell you, Travis, when I came
out of that place Deklay was leading me by the hand as if I were a
child. And he was shivering as a man who will never be warm again. There
is an evil there beyond our understanding. I think that this Tatar girl,
were she only to stay there a very short time, would be well
frightened--so frightened that any trained scientist examining her later
would know there was a mystery to be explored."
"The ape-things--could they have tried to run the Redax?" Travis
wondered. To associate machines with the creatures was outwardly pure
folly. But they had been discovered on two of the planets of the old
civilization, and Ashe had thought that they might represent the
degenerate remnants of a once intelligent species.
"That is possible. If so, they raised a storm which drove them out and
killed one of them. The ship is a haunted place now."
"But for us to use the girl...." Travis had seen the logic in Buck's
first suggestion, but now he differed. If the atmosphere of the ship was
as terrifying as Buck said, to imprison Kaydessa there, even
temporarily, was still wrong.
"She need not remain long. Suppose we should do this: We shall enter
with her and then allow the disturbance we would feel to overcome us. We
could run, leave her alone. When she left the ship, we could then take
up the chase, shepherding her back to the country she knows. Within the
ship we would be with her and could see she did not remain too long."
Travis could see a good prospect in that plan. There was one thing he
would insist on--if Kaydessa was to be in that ship, he himself would be
one of the "captors." He said as much, and Buck accepted his
determination as final.
They dispatched a scouting party to infiltrate the territory to the
north, to watch and wait their chance of capture. Travis strove to
regain his feet, to be ready to move when the moment came.
Five days later he was able to reach the ridge beyond which lay the
wrecked ship. With him were Jil-Lee, Lupe, and Manulito. They satisfied
themselves that the globe had had no visitors since Buck and Deklay;
there was no sign that the ape-things had returned.
"From here," Travis said, "the ship doesn't look too bad, almost as if
it might be able to take off again."
"It might lift," Jil-Lee gestured to the mountaintop behind the curve of
the globe--"about that far. The tubes on this side are intact."
"What would happen were the Reds to get inside and try to fly again?"
Manulito wondered aloud.
Travis was struck by a sudden idea, one perhaps just as wild as the
other inspirations he had had since landing on Topaz, but one to be
studied and explored--not dismissed without consideration. Suppose
enough power remained to lift the ship partially and then blow it up?
With the Red technicians on board at the time.... But he was no
engineer, he had no idea whether any part of the globe might or might
not work again.
"They are not fools; a close look would tell them it is a wreck,"
Jil-Lee countered.
Travis walked on. Not too far ahead a yellow-brown shape moved out of
the brush, stood stiff-legged in his path, facing the ship and growling
in a harsh rumble of sound. Whatever moved or operated in that wreck was
picked up by the acute sense of the coyote, even at this distance.
"On!" Travis edged around the snarling animal. With one halting step and
then another, it followed him. There was a sharp warning yelp from the
brush, and a second coyote head appeared. Naginlta followed Travis, but
Nalik'ideyu refused to approach the grounded globe.
Travis surveyed the ship closely, trying to remember the layout of its
interior. To turn the whole sphere into a trap--was it possible? How had
Ashe said the Redax worked? Something about high-frequency waves
stimulating certain brain and nerve centers.
What if one were shielded from those rays? That tear in the side--he
himself must have climbed through that the night they crashed. And the
break was not too far from the space lock. Near the lock was a storage
compartment. And if it had not been jammed, or its contents crushed,
they might have something. He beckoned to Jil-Lee.
"Give me a hand--up there."
"Why?"
"I want to see if the space suits are intact."
Jil-Lee regarded Travis with open bewilderment, but Manulito pushed
forward. "We do not need those suits to walk here, Travis. This air we
can breathe--"
"Not for the air, and not in the open." Travis advanced at a deliberate
pace. "Those suits may be insulated in more ways than one----"
"Against a mixed-up Redax broadcast, you mean!" Jil-Lee exclaimed.
"Yes, but you stay here, younger brother. This is a risky climb, and you
are not yet strong."
Travis was forced to accede to that, waiting as Manulito and Lupe
climbed up to the tear and entered. At least Buck and Deklay's
experience had forewarned them and they would be prepared for the weird
ghosts haunting the interior.
But when they returned, pulling between them the limp space suit, both
men were pale, the shiny sheen of sweat on their foreheads, their hands
shaking. Lupe sat down on the ground before Travis.
"Evil spirits," he said, giving to this modern phenomenon the old name.
"Truly ghosts and witches walk in there."
Manulito had spread the suit on the ground and was examining it with a
care which spoke of familiarity.
"This is unharmed," he reported. "Ready to wear."
The suits were all tailored for size, Travis knew. And this fitted a
slender, medium-sized man. It would fit him, Travis Fox. But Manulito
was already unbuckling the fastenings with practiced ease.
"I shall try it out," he announced. And Travis, seeing the awkward climb
to the entrance of the ship, had to agree that the first test should be
carried out by someone more agile at the moment.
Sealed into the suit, with the bubble helmet locked in place, the Apache
climbed back into the globe. The only form of communication with him was
the rope he had tied about him, and if he went above the first level, he
would have to leave that behind.
In the first few moments they saw no twitch of alarm running along the
rope. After counting fifty slowly, Travis gave it a tentative jerk, to
find it firmly fastened within. So Manulito had tied it there and was
climbing to the control cabin.
They continued to wait with what patience they could muster. Naginlta,
pacing up and down a good distance from the ship, whined at intervals,
the warning echoed each time by his mate upslope.
"I don't like it--" Travis broke off when the helmeted figure appeared
again at the break. Moving slowly in his cumbersome clothing, Manulito
reached the ground, fumbled with the catch of his head covering and then
stood, taking deep, lung-filling gulps of air.
"Well?" Travis demanded.
"I see no ghosts," Manulito said, grinning. "This is ghost-proof!" He
slapped his gloved hand against the covering over his chest. "There is
also this--from what I know of these ships--some of the relays still
work. I think this could be made into a trap. We could entice the Reds
in and then...." His hand moved in a quick upward flip.
"But we don't know anything about the engines," Travis replied.
"No? Listen--you, Fox, are not the only one to remember useful
knowledge." Manulito had lost his cheerful grin. "Do you think we are
just the savages those big brains back at the project wished us to be?
They have played a trick on us with their Redax. So, we can play a few
tricks, too. Me--? I went to M.I.T., or is that one of the things you no
longer remember, Fox?"
Travis swallowed hastily. He really had forgotten that fact until this
very minute. From the beginning, the Apache team had been carefully
selected and screened, not only for survival potential, which was their
basic value to the project, but also for certain individual skills. Just
as Travis' grounding in archaeology had been one advantage, so had
Manulito's technical training made a valuable, though different,
contribution. If at first the Redax, used without warning, had smothered
that training, perhaps the effects were now fading.
"You can do something, then?" he asked eagerly.
"I can try. There is a chance to booby trap the control cabin at least.
And that is where they would poke and pry. Working in this suit will be
tough. How about my trying to smash up the Redax first?"
"Not until after we use it on our captive," Jil-Lee decided. "Then there
would be some time before the Reds come----"
"You talk as if they _will_ come," cut in Lupe. "How can you be sure?"
"We can't," Travis agreed. "But we can count on this much, judging from
the past. Once they know that there is a wrecked ship here, they will be
forced to explore it. They cannot afford an enemy settlement on this
side of the mountains. That would be, according to their way of
thinking, an eternal threat."
Jil-Lee nodded. "That is true. This is a complicated plan, yes, and one
in which many things may go wrong. But it is also one which covers all
the loopholes we know of."
With Lupe's aid Manulito crawled out of the suit. As he leaned it
carefully against a supporting rock he said:
"I have been thinking of this treasure house in the towers. Suppose we
could find new weapons there...."
Travis hesitated. He still shrank from the thought of opening the secret
places behind those glowing walls, to loose a new peril.
"If we took weapons from there and lost the fight...." He advanced his
first objection and was glad to see the expression of comprehension on
Jil-Lee's face.
"It would be putting the weapons straight into Red hands," the other
agreed.
"We may have to chance it before we're through," Manulito warned.
"Suppose we do get some of their technicians into this trap. That isn't
going to open up their main defense for us. We may need a bigger
nutcracker than we've ever seen."
With a return of that queasy feeling he had known in the tower, Travis
knew Manulito was speaking sense. They might have to open Pandora's box
before the end of this campaign.
15
They camped another two days near the wrecked ship while Manulito
prowled the haunted corridors and cabins in his space suit, planning his
booby trap. At night he drew diagrams on pieces of bark and discussed
the possibility of this or that device, sometimes lapsing into
technicalities his companions could not follow. But Travis was well
satisfied that Manulito knew what he was doing.
On the morning of the third day Nolan slipped into their midst. He was
dust-grimed, his face gaunt, the signs of hard travel plain to read.
Travis handed him the nearest canteen, and they watched him drink
sparingly in small sips before he spoke.
"They come ... with the girl--"
"You had trouble?" asked Jil-Lee.
"The Tatars had moved their camp, which was only wise, since the Reds
must have had a line on the other one. And they are now farther to the
west. But--" he wiped his lips with the back of his hand--"also we saw
your towers, Fox. And that is a place of power!"
"No sign that the Reds are prowling there?"
Nolan shook his head. "To my mind the mists there conceal the towers
from aerial view. Only one coming on foot could tell them from the
natural crags of the hills."
Travis relaxed. Time still granted them a margin of grace. He glanced up
to see Nolan smiling faintly.
"This maiden, she is a kin to the puma of the mountains," he announced.
"She has marked Tsoay with her claws until he looks like the ear-clipped
yearling fresh from the branding chute----"
"She is not hurt?" Travis demanded.
This time Nolan chuckled openly. "Hurt? No, we had much to do to keep
her from hurting us, younger brother. That one is truly as she claims, a
daughter of wolves. And she is also keen-witted, marking a return trail
all the way, though she does not know that is as we wish. Did we not
pick the easiest way back for just that reason? Yes, she plans to
escape."
Travis stood up. "Let us finish this quickly!" His voice came out on a
rough note. This plan had never had his full approval. Now he found it
less and less easy to think about taking Kaydessa into the ship,
allowing the emotional torment lurking there to work upon her. Yet he
knew that the girl would not be hurt, and he had made sure he would be
beside her within the globe, sharing with her the horror of the unseen.
A rattling of gravel down the narrow valley opening gave warning to
those by the campfire. Manulito had already stowed the space suit in
hiding. To Kaydessa they must have seemed reverted entirely to savagery.
Tsoay came first, an angry raking of four parallel scratches down his
left cheek. And behind him Buck and Eskelta shoved the prisoner, urging
her on with a show of roughness which did not descend to actual
brutality. Her long braids had shaken loose, and a sleeve was torn,
leaving one slender arm bare. But none of the fighting spirit had left
her.
They thrust her out into the circle of waiting men and she planted her
feet firmly apart, glaring at them all indiscriminately until she
sighted Travis. Then her anger became hotter and more deadly.
"Pig! Rooter in the dirt! Diseased camel--" she shouted at him in
English and then reverted to her own tongue, her voice riding up and
down the scale. Her hands were tied behind her back, but there were no
bonds on her tongue.
"This is one who can speak thunders, and shoot lightnings from her
mouth," Buck commented in Apache. "Put her well away from the wood, lest
she set it aflame."
Tsoay held his hands over his ears. "She can deafen a man when she
cannot set her mark on him otherwise. Let us speedily get rid of her."
Yet for all their jeering comments, their eyes held respect. Often in
the past a defiant captive who stood up boldly to his captors had
received more consideration than usual from Apache warriors; courage was
a quality they prized. A Pinda-lick-o-yi such as Tom Jeffords, who rode
into Cochise's camp and sat in the midst of his sworn enemies for a
parley, won the friendship of the very chief he had been fighting.
Kaydessa had more influence with her captors than she could dream of
holding.
Now it was time for Travis to play his part. He caught the girl's
shoulder and pushed her before him toward the wreck.
Some of the spirit seemed to have left her thin, tense body, and she
went without any more fight. Only when they came into full view of the
ship did she falter. Travis heard her breathe a gasp of surprise.
As they had planned, four of the Apaches--Jil-Lee, Tsoay, Nolan, and
Buck--fanned out toward the heights about the ship. Manulito had already
gone to cover, to don the space suit and prepare for any accident.
Resolutely Travis continued to propel Kaydessa ahead. At the moment he
did not know which was worse, to enter the ship expecting the fear to
strike, or to meet it unprepared. He was ready to refuse to enter, not
to allow the girl, sullenly plodding on under his compulsion, to face
that unseen but potent danger.
Only the memory of the towers and the threat of the Reds finding and
exploiting the treasure there kept him going. Eskelta went first,
climbing to the tear. Travis cut the ropes binding Kaydessa's wrists and
gave her a slight slap between the shoulders.
"Climb, woman!" His anxiety made that a harsh order and she climbed.
Eskelta was inside now, heading for the cabin which might reasonably be
selected as a prison. They planned to get the girl as far as that point
and then stage their act of being overcome by fear, allowing her to
escape.
Stage an act? Travis was not two feet along that corridor before he knew
that there would be little acting needed on his part. The thing which
pervaded the ship did not attack sharply, rather it seeped into his mind
and body as if he drew in poison with every breath, sent it racing
along his veins with every beat of a laboring heart. Yet he could not
put any name to his feelings, except an awful, weakening fear which
weighted him heavier with every step he took.
Kaydessa screamed. Not this time in rage, but with such fervor that
Travis lost his hold, staggered back to the wall. She whirled about, her
face contorted, and sprang at him.
It was indeed like trying to fight a wildcat and after the first second
or two he was hard put to protect his eyes, his face, his side, without
injuring her in return. She scrambled over him, running for the break in
the wall, and disappeared. Travis gasped, and started to crawl for the
break. Eskelta loomed over him, pulled him up in haste.
They reached the opening but did not climb through. Travis was uncertain
as to whether he could make that descent yet, and Eskelta was obeying
orders in not venturing out too soon.
Below, the ground was bare. There was no sign of the Apaches, though
they were in hiding there--and none of Kaydessa. Travis was amazed that
she had vanished so quickly.
Still uneasy from the emanation within, they perched within the shadow
of the break until Travis thought that the fugitive had a good
five-minute start. Then he nodded a signal to Eskelta.
By the time they reached ground level Travis felt a warm wetness
spreading under his shielding palm and he knew the wound had opened. He
spoke a word or two in hot protest against that mishap, knowing it would
keep him from the trail. Kaydessa must be covered all the way back
across the pass, not only to be shepherded away from her people and
toward the plains where she could be picked up by a Red patrol, but also
to keep her from danger. And he had planned from the first to be one of
those shepherds.
Now he was about as much use as a trail-lame pony. However, he could
send deputies. He thought out his call, and Nalik'ideyu's head appeared
in a frame of bush.
"Go, both of you and run with her! Guard--!" He said the words in a
whisper, thought them with a fierce intensity as he centered his gaze on
the yellow eyes in the pointed coyote face. There was a feeling of
assent, and then the animal was gone. Travis sighed.
The Apache scouts were subtle and alert, but the coyotes could far outdo
any man. With Nalik'ideyu and Naginlta flanking her flight, Kaydessa
would be well guarded. She would probably never see her guards or know
that they were running protection for her.
"That was a good move," Jil-Lee said, coming out of concealment. "But
what have you done to yourself?" He stepped closer, pulling Travis' hand
away from his side. By the time Lupe came to report, Travis was again
wound in a strapping bandage pulled tightly about his lower ribs, and
reconciled to the fact that any trailing he would do must be well to the
rear of the first party.
"The towers," he said to Jil-Lee. "If our plan works, we can catch part
of the Reds here. But we still have their ship to take, and for that we
need help which we may find at the towers. Or at least we can be on
guard there if they return with Kaydessa on that path."
Lupe dropped down lightly from an upper ledge. He was grinning.
"That woman is one who thinks. She runs from the ship first as a rabbit
with a wolf at her heels. Then she begins to think. She climbs--" He
lifted one finger to the slope behind them. "She goes behind a rock to
watch under cover. When Fox comes from the ship with Eskelta, again she
climbs. Buck lets himself be seen, so she moves east, as we wish--"
"And now?" questioned Travis.
"She is keeping to the high ways; almost she thinks like one of the
People on the war trail. Nolan believes she will hole up for the night
somewhere above. He will make sure."