Jil-Lee glanced back at the slit door, but Buck still watched Travis.
"They call?" he asked.
"In a way," Travis admitted. But the compulsion had already ebbed; he
was free. "It is gone now."
"This is not a good place," Buck observed somberly. "We touch that which
should not be held by men of our earth." He held out the weapon.
"Did not the People take up the rifles of the Pinda-lick-o-yi for their
defense when it was necessary?" Jil-Lee demanded. "We do what we must.
After seeing that," his chin indicated the slit and what lay behind
it--"do you wish the Reds to forage here?"
"Still," Buck's words came slowly, "this is a choice between two evils,
rather than between an evil and a good--"
"Then let us see how powerful this evil is!" Jil-Lee headed for the
corridor leading to the pillar.
* * * * *
It was late afternoon when they made their way through the swirling
mists of the valley under the archway giving on the former site of the
outlaw Tatar camp. Travis sighted the long barrel of the weapon at a
small bush backed by a boulder, and he pressed the firing button. There
was no way of knowing whether the weapon was loaded except to try it.
The result of his action was quick--quick and terrifying. There was no
sound, no sign of any projectile ... ray-gas ... or whatever might have
issued in answer to his finger movement. But the bush--the bush was no
more!
A black smear made a ragged outline of the extinguished branches and
leaves on the rock which had stood behind. The earth might still enclose
roots under a thin coating of ash, but the bush was gone!
"The breath of Naye'nezyani--powerful beyond belief!" Buck broke their
horrified silence first. "In truth evil is here!"
Jil-Lee raised his gun--if gun it could be called--aimed at the rock
with the bush silhouette plain to see and fired.
This time they were able to witness disintegration in progress, the
crumble of the stone as if its substance was no more than sand lapped by
river water. A pile of blackened rubble remained--nothing more.
"To use this on a living thing?" Buck protested, horror basing the doubt
in his voice.
"We do not use it against living things," Travis promised, "but against
the ship of the Reds--to cut that to pieces. This will open the shell of
the turtle and let us at its meat."
Jil-Lee nodded. "Those are true words. But now I agree with your fears
of this place, Travis. This is a devil thing and must not be allowed to
fall into the hands of those who--"
"Will use it more freely than we plan to?" Buck wanted to know. "We
reserve to ourselves that right because we hold our motives higher? To
think that way is also a crooked trail. We will use this means because
we must, but afterward...."
Afterward that warehouse must be closed, the tapes giving the entrance
clue destroyed. One part of Travis fought that decision, right though he
knew it to be. The towers were the menace he had believed. And what was
more discouraging than the risk they now ran, was the belief that the
treasure was a poison which could not be destroyed but which might
spread from Topaz to Terra.
Suppose the Western Conference had discovered that storehouse and
explored its riches, would they have been any less eager to exploit
them? As Buck had pointed out, one's own ideals could well supply
reasons for violence. In the past Terra had been racked by wars of
religion, one fanatically held opinion opposed to another. There was no
righteousness in such struggles, only fatal ends. The Reds had no right
to this new knowledge--but neither did they. It must be locked against
the meddling of fools and zealots.
"Taboo--" Buck spoke that word with an emphasis they could appreciate.
Knowledge must be set behind the invisible barriers of taboo, and that
could work.
"These three--no more--we found no other weapons!" Jil-Lee added a
warning suggestion.
"No others," Buck agreed and Travis echoed, adding:
"We found tombs of the space people, and these were left with them.
Because of our great need we borrowed them, but they must be returned to
the dead or trouble will follow. And they may only be used against the
fortress of the Reds by us, who first found them and have taken unto
ourselves the wrath of disturbed spirits."
"Well thought! That is an answer to give the People. The towers are the
tombs of dead ones. When we return these they shall be taboo. We are
agreed?" Buck asked.
"We are agreed!"
Buck tried his weapon on a sapling, saw it vanish into nothingness. None
of the Apaches wanted to carry the strange guns against their bodies;
the power made them objects of fear, rather than arms to delight a
warrior. And when they returned to their temporary camp, they laid all
three on a blanket and covered them up. But they could not cover up the
memories of what had happened to bush, rock, and tree.
"If such are their small weapons," Buck observed that evening, "then
what kind of things did they have to balance our heavy armament? Perhaps
they were able to burn up worlds!"
"That may be what happened elsewhere," Travis replied. "We do not know
what put an end to their empire. The capital-planet we found on the
first voyage had not been destroyed, but it had been evacuated in haste.
One building had not even been stripped of its furnishings." He
remembered the battle he had fought there, he and Ross Murdock and the
winged native, standing up to an attack of the ape-things while the
winged warrior had used his physical advantage to fly above and bomb the
enemies with boxes snatched from the piles....
"And here they went to sleep in order to wait out some danger--time or
disaster--they did not believe would be permanent," Buck mused.
Travis thought he would flee from the eyes of the sleepers throughout
his dreams that night, but on the contrary he slept heavily, finding it
hard to rouse when Jil-Lee awakened him for his watch. But he was alert
when he saw a four-footed shape flit out of the shadows, drink water
from the stream, and shake itself vigorously in a spray of drops.
"Naginlta!" he greeted the coyote. Trouble? He could have shouted that
question, but he put a tight rein on his impatience and strove to
communicate in the only method possible.
No, what the coyote had come to report was not trouble but the fact that
the one he had been set to guard was headed back into the mountains,
though others came with her--four others. Nalik'ideyu still watched
their camp. Her mate had come for further orders.
Travis squatted before the animal, cupped the coyote's jowls between his
palms. Naginlta suffered his touch with only a small whine of
uneasiness. With all his power of mental suggestion, Travis strove to
reach the keen brain he knew was served by the yellow eyes looking into
his.
The others with Kaydessa were to be led on, taken to the ship. But
Kaydessa must not suffer harm. When they reached a spot near-by--Travis
thought of a certain rock beyond the pass--then one of the coyotes was
to go ahead to the ship. Let the Apaches there know....
Manulito and Eskelta should also be warned by the sentry along the
peaks, but additional alerting would not go amiss. Those four with
Kaydessa--they must reach the trap!
"What was that?" Buck rolled out of his blanket.
"Naginlta--" The coyote sped back into the dark again. "The Reds have
taken the bait, a party of at least four with Kaydessa are moving into
the foothills, heading south."
But the enemy party was not the only one on the move. In the light of
day a sentry's mirror from a point in the peaks sent another warning
down to their camp.
Out in their mountain meadows the Tatar outlaws were on horseback,
moving toward the entrance of the tower valley. Buck knelt by the
blanket covering the alien weapons.
"Now what?"
"We'll have to stop them," Travis replied, but he had no idea of just
how they would halt those determined Mongol horsemen.
17
There were ten of them riding on small, wiry steppe ponies--men and
women both, and well armed. Travis recalled it was the custom of the
Horde that the women fought as warriors when necessary. Menlik--there
was no mistaking the flapping robe of their leader. And they were
singing! The rider behind the shaman thumped with violent energy a drum
fastened beside his saddle horn, its heavy boom, boom the same call the
Apache had heard before. The Mongols were working themselves into the
mood for some desperate effort, Travis deduced. And if they were too
deeply under the Red spell, there would be no arguing with them. He
could wait no longer.
The Apache swung down from a ledge near the valley gate, moved into the
open and stood waiting, the alien weapon resting across his forearm. If
necessary, he intended to give a demonstration with it for an object
lesson.
"_Dar-u-gar_!" The war cry which had once awakened fear across a quarter
of Terra. Thin here, and from only a few throats, but just as menacing.
Two of the horsemen aimed lances, preparing to ride him down. Travis
sighted a tree midway between them and pressed the firing button. This
time there was a flash, a flicker of light, to mark the disappearance of
a living thing.
One of the lancers' ponies reared, squealed in fear. The other kept on
his course.
"Menlik!" Travis shouted. "Hold up your man! I do not want to kill!"
The shaman called out, but the lancer was already level with the
vanished tree, his head half turned on his shoulders to witness the
blackened earth where it had stood. Then he dropped his lance, sawed on
the reins. A rifle bullet might not have halted his charge, unless it
killed or wounded, but what he had just seen was a thing beyond his
understanding.
The tribesmen sat their horses, facing Travis, watching him with the
feral eyes of the wolves they claimed as forefathers, wolves that
possessed the cunning of the wild, cunning enough not to rush breakneck
into unknown danger.