She was leading the way to the thin, rough ridge that marched up the
mountain between two of its smooth planes of fracture. She sprang to
the ridge and began running lightly up it. At twenty feet she stopped.
The men were slower. The ridge was nothing but saw-toothed points of
raw rock, hard and glassy and glittering. They had not had the girl's
practice with it.
She motioned Kemp past her and called down to Pritchard. "This is our
only hope. I've never seen The One on any of these mountains. I'm sure
It can't climb the smooth sides--"
"And we can hold It back with our flamers. Good girl."
"But hadn't we better get a little higher?" queried Sturgis.
"Higher!" echoed the girl. "We've got to get to the top!"
Frantically, they climbed, taking insane chances, fantastically
insecure holds, scrambling, cutting their hands on the raw rock edges,
living a nightmare....
At last Kemp and Cornelia, weak with exhaustion, sank against the
ridge, gasping and heaving. Sturgis, next in line, had no breath with
which to berate them. He could only crouch there and stare helplessly
at them both.
Pritchard braced his feet and dared to look down. The One was a
straight red line across the meadow, a gleam of highlight from Its wet
side where the afternoon sun struck It. (Unconsciously he thought of It
now as Cornelia did, as a person.) It was heading for the foot of the
ridge.
They all stared down, sucking in their tortured breaths. Waiting for It
to reach the ridge and start climbing, Pritchard found himself studying
It detachedly. He realized his courage and reason were somehow reviving.
It was, after all, a worm. It differed from a six-inch Terran
night-crawler only in that It measured about a hundred and fifty feet
in length, and was proportionately much thinner, like a snake. It also
differed in those snail-like tips that probed out into slim, delicate
points or contracted into thick stubs scarce six feet long. Those tips
were investigating the jagged rock of the ridge now.
And he saw that there were tips at the other end, too. But one was
missing. Only a round stump accompanied the other long trailing
feeler. It was a fair index of The One's terrible strength, Pritchard
thought--realizing where the rest of that tip was now--that, in
trying to wrench Itself clear, It had knocked over a hundred-foot,
five-thousand-ton space ship.
"It's coming," said Kemp in a shrill, brittle voice. The hunter shot a
glance at the stocky youth and saw he was fighting hysteria.
The One was rippling slowly up the ridge. Pritchard guessed Its speed
was greater than it seemed at that distance. Like a scarlet river, It
poured steadily up.
"After I've used this," said Cornelia in an even, conversational voice,
"you gentlemen can have it if you don't mind having to pull it out of
me." She held up her long knife, and there was no expression on her
face.
Kemp and Sturgis could only stare at her. Pritchard couldn't warn her
by asking them to take it away from her, and anyway this was no place
for a wrestle.
"And why do you think we would want that?" he asked in as pleasant a
tone as he could manage.
"So much better than a flamer or jumping," she replied. "Take my advice
and--"
"I wish you would pull yourself together," said Pritchard. "You're
frightening Kemp up there."
Startled, Kemp stared back down at his chief, and then he closed his
mouth in a firm line. Pritchard congratulated himself that the remark
was a stone that had slain two birds.
"You don't honestly think there's a way out of this," exclaimed
Cornelia, "with--with--"
"What I wouldn't give for my snapper!" breathed Kemp.
"Or one of those five-inchers," and Sturgis jerked his head at the
little tumbled beetles over at the river.
"There isn't a rocket-tube down there I'd trust now," said Pritchard.
"They're all bunged out of alignment. Some of the snappers might still
be in shape to use...." His voice trailed off. Something was taking
shape in his thoughts, something revolving about a word Cornelia had
uttered--the word "jump."
"Well, what _can_ we do?" muttered Sturgis tensely. The worm was still
well below, but coming steadily up. They could see the little scarlet
tips now, questing over the jagged edges. Behind was all humping
redness.
"We were very foolish--" Pritchard checked himself. "I was very
foolish. I permitted us to be outmaneuvered. The one thing that monster
doesn't want is for one of us to get back to the cruisers--"
"I've been thinking," Sturgis cut in. "Why don't we empty all our
flamer tanks along the ridge here, climb all the way to the top and
then, as soon as it's almost there, spark the fuel and give it a good
roasting?"
Pritchard shook his head. "I thought of that. You forget how volatile
that stuff is. By the time it gets there--no, I've got a better use for
the flamers."
He began unstrapping the tank from his shoulders. "Kemp, pass yours on
down. No, hang on to it, just in case. Sturgis, you take my position
and hold It off as long as you can--" He glanced at the gauge on the
light plastic tank and shook his head grimly. "Okay, children, let's
get going--to the top."
The mountain wasn't really much of a mountain, being only some five
hundred feet high. Their first frantic scramble up the ridge had
carried them almost two-thirds of the way.
Behind them, the worm was flowing steadily upward, like a river of
blood, along the narrow ridge.
"Kemp," panted Pritchard as the short young man finally and painfully
inched over the knife-edged peak.
Kemp turned, stretching out a hand to Cornelia to help her up and over.
"Yes?"
"I'm putting this girl in your charge. She's your responsibility--"
"What are you going to do?" put in Cornelia quickly.
Pritchard looked up into those gray-green eyes so intent upon him.
A pang of regret stabbed through him. He was no longer seeing her
sweet-lined body. Here was a girl he could have ridden the starways
with. A person with enough courage and resource to have held her own
in this killer-infested Eden.
"I'm taking a powder, as they used to say back on good old Terra. I'm
gambling. Gambling that I can get back to the one cruiser that hasn't
burnt up all its wiring, and call the ship." He slapped the leg-pocket
of his breeches. Kemp nodded. The pocket contained a ready-packed
emergency chute.
* * * * *