"If the gods are so wonderful why did they kill your other two
children?" asked Miran sourly. "And why did they kill my Clansmen, and
why did they smash my _Bird_? Why...?"
"Shut up!" said Green. "This is no time to cry about anything. We have
to get out with whole hides. The philosophizing and tears can come
later."
"Mennirox is an ungrateful god," muttered Miran. "After all I did for
him, too."
Amra dried her tears and said, "How did you escape? I thought all the
males who hadn't been killed in the wreck were speared?"
"Almost everybody was," replied Grizquetr. "But I crawled down into
the hold and slipped through to a hiding place beneath one of the fish
tanks, which had overturned. It was wet there, and there were dead fish
nestling beside me. The savages did not find me, though doubtless they
would have when they began salvaging. It was thinking about that that
decided me to crawl back out on the other side of the 'roller away from
the savages. I did so, and I found that I could belly my way through
the grass growing on the edge. I almost died of fright, though, because
I crawled head on into Miran. He was hiding there, too."
"I was thrown off the foredeck by the impact," interrupted the
captain. "I should have broken every bone in my body, but I landed on
a hull sail, which had come down and was lying on the starboard side,
supported by the fallen mast. It was like falling into a hammock. From
there I dropped into the grass and snaked along the very edge of the
island. Several times I almost fell off, and I would have if I'd been a
pound fatter, an inch wider. As it was...."
"Listen," said Grizquetr, breaking in. "This island is the _wuru_!"
"What do you mean?" said Green.
"While I was clinging to the edge of the island I thought I'd hang down
over it and see if there was any place there to hide. There wasn't,
because the underside of the island is one smooth sheet. I know,
because I could see in the moonlight clear to the other side. It was
smooth, smooth, like a slab of iron.
"And that's not all! You know how the grass on the plains hereabouts
has been tall, uncut? Well, the grass just ahead of the edge was uncut.
But the grass underneath the island was being cut off. Rather, it was
vanishing! The top of the grass was just disappearing into air! Only a
lawn of grass about an inch high was left!"
"Then this island _is_ one big lawnmower," said Green. "More than just
interesting. But we'll have to investigate that later. Right now...."
And he walked toward the little hut by the cave mouth. As he
approached it several large house cats streaked out of the doorway. A
moment later Green came out. He grinned broadly.
"The priestess has passed out. The place smells like a brewery. The
cats are in their cups, too. All drinking from bowls set on the ground
for them, staggering around, yowling, fighting. If they don't wake her
up, nothing can."
"I have heard that these old priestesses are often drunkards," said
Amra. "They lead a lonely life because they're taboo, and nobody even
goes near them except during certain religious customs. They have only
their bottle and their cats to keep them company."
"Ah," said Miran, "you are thinking of the Tale of Samdroo, the Tailor
Who Turned Sailor. Yes, that is supposed to be a story to entertain
children, but I'm beginning to think there is a great deal to it.
Remember, the story describes just such a hill and just such a cave. It
is said that every roaming island has just such a place. And...."
"You talk too much," broke in Aga harshly. "Let's get on into the cave."
Green could appreciate what Aga's comment meant. Miran had lost face
because he'd allowed his vessel to be wrecked and his Clansmen murdered
en masse. To Aga and the other women he was no longer Captain Miran,
the rich patriarch. He was Miran, the shipwrecked sailor. A fat old
sailor. Just that. Nothing more.
He could have redeemed himself if he had committed suicide. But his
eagerness to live had resulted in his placing himself on an even lower
level in their estimation.
Miran must have realized this, for he did not reply. Instead he stood
to one side.
Green walked thirty paces into the cave, then looked back over his
shoulder. The entrance was still visible, an arch outlined in the
bright moonshine.
Someone coughed. Green was about to caution them to keep quiet, when
he felt his nostrils tickling and had to fight to down a loud sneeze
himself.
"Dust."
"Good," said Green. "Maybe they never come down here."
Suddenly the tunnel turned at right angles, to the left. The little
light that penetrated from the entrance disappeared in total blackness.
The party halted.
"What if there are traps set for intruders?" wailed Inzax.
"That's a chance well have to take," Green growled. "We'll go in the
dark until we come to another turn. Then we'll light up a torch or two.
The natives won't be able to see the glow."
He walked ahead feeling the wall with his left hand. Suddenly he
stopped. Amra bumped into him.
"What is it?" she asked anxiously.
"The rock wall has now become metal. Feel here."
He guided her hand.
"You're right," she whispered. "There's a definite seam, and I can tell
the difference between the two!"
"The floor's metal, too," added Soon. "My feet are bare, and I can feel
it. What's more, the dust is all gone."
Green went ahead, and after thirty more paces he came to another
ninety-degree turn, to the right. The walls and floor were composed of
the smooth, cool metal. After making sure that the entire party was
around the corner, he told a woman carrying some torches taken from
a long house to light one. Its bright flare showed the group staring
round-eyed at the large chamber in which they stood.
Everywhere were bare gray metal walls and floors. No furniture of any
kind.
Nor a speck of dust.
"There's a doorway to another room," he said. "We might as well go on
in."
He took the torch from the woman and, holding a cutlass in the other,
he led the way. Once across the threshold he halted.
This room was even larger than the other. But it had furnishings of a
sort. And its further wall was not metal but earth.
At the same time the room began to brighten with light coming from an
invisible source.
Soon screamed and threw herself against her mother, clinging
desperately to her waist. The babies began howling, and the other
adults acted in the various ways that panic affected them.
Green alone remained unmoved. He knew what was happening, but he
couldn't blame the rest for their behavior. They had never heard of an
electronic eye, so they couldn't be expected to maintain coolness.
The only thing that Green feared at that moment was that the outcries
would be heard by the savages outside the cave. So he hastened to
assure the women that this phenomenon was nothing to be frightened
about. It was common in his home country. A mere matter of white magic
that anyone could practice.
They quieted down but were still uneasy. Wide-eyed, they bunched up
about him.
"The natives themselves aren't scared of this," he said. "They must
come here at times. See? There's an altar built against that dirt wall.
And from the bones piled beneath it I'd say that sacrifices were held
here."
He looked for another door. There seemed to be none. He found it hard
to believe that there couldn't be. Somehow he'd had the feeling that
great things lay ahead of him. These rooms, and this lighting, were
evidences of an earlier civilization that quite possibly had been
on a level with his own. He'd known that the island itself must be
powered with an automatically working anti-gravity plant, fueled either
atomically or from the planet's magneto-gravitic field. Why the whole
unit should be covered with rocks and soil and trees he didn't know.
But he had been sure that somewhere in the bowels of this mass of land
was just such a place as this. And more. Where was the power plant? Was
it sealed up so that no one could get to it? Or, as was likely, was
there a door to the plant which could not be opened unless one had a
key of some sort?
First he had to find the door.
He examined the altar, which was made of iron. It was a platform about
three feet high and ten feet square. Upon it stood a chair, fashioned
from pieces of iron. From its back rose a steel rod about half an inch
in diameter and ten feet long, its lower end held secure between two
uprights by a thick iron fork. Once the fork was withdrawn, the rod
would obviously fall over against the earth wall behind it, though the
lower end would still remain on the uprights and would, in fact, stick
against whoever was sitting in the chair at the moment.
"Odd," said Green. "If it weren't for those catheaded idols on the
ends of the platform, and the bones at its foot, I'd not know this
_was_ an altar. Bones! They're black, burned black."
He looked again at the rod. "Now," he said, half to himself, "if I were
to withdraw the fork, and the rod fell, it would strike the wall. That
is evident. But what is it all about?"
Amra brought him some long pieces of rope.
"These were stacked against the wall," she said.
"Yes? Ah! Now, if I were to tie one end of this rope about the apex of
that rod, and someone else were to stand upon the altar and take out
the fork, then I could control which direction the rod would fall by
pulling it toward me. Or allowing it to go away from me. And the person
who had taken the fork out would then have plenty of time to get down
from the altar and back to the region of safety, where the rope-wielder
and his friends would be stationed. Alas, the poor fellow sitting in
the chair! Yes, I see it all now."
He looked up from the rope he held in his hand. "Aga!" he said sharply.
"Get away from that wall!"
The tall, lean woman was walking past the altar, holding her bare
cutlass in her hand. When she heard Green she paused in her stride,
gave him an astonished look, then continued.
"You don't understand," she called back over her shoulder. "This wall
isn't solid earth. It's fluffy, like a young chick's feathers. It's
dust, dust. I think we can knock it down, cut our way through. There
must be something on the other side...."
"Aga!" he yelled. "Don't! Stop where you are!"
But she had lifted her blade and brought it down in a hard stroke that
was to show him how easy the stuff would be to slash away.
Green grabbed Amra and Paxi and dived to the floor, pulling them with
him.
Thunder roared and lightning filled the room, dazzling and deafening
him! Even in its midst he could see the dark figure of Aga, transfixed,
crucified in white fire.
19
Then Aga was blotted out by the dense cloud of dust that billowed out
over her and filled the whole room. With it came an intense heat. Green
opened his mouth to cry out to Amra and Paxi to cover their faces and
especially their noses. Before he could do so his own open mouth was
packed with dust and his nostrils were full. He began sneezing and
coughing explosively, while his eyes ran tears in their efforts to wash
out the dirt that caked and burned them. Clods of dirt struck him,
hurled by the blast. They didn't hurt because they were so small and
so fluffy. But they fell so swiftly and in such numbers that he was
half-buried under them. Even in the midst of his shock he couldn't help
being thankful that he'd been breathing out when the heat struck him.
Otherwise he'd have sucked in air that would have seared his lungs,
and he'd have dropped dead. As it was, wherever his skin had not been
covered by cloth he felt as if he were suffering a bad case of sunburn.
Painfully, he rose on all fours and began crawling toward the other
room, where he thought the dust would not be so thick. At the same
time he tugged at Amra's arm--at least he supposed it was her arm,
since she'd been so close to him when the explosion took place. His
gesture was intended to tell her that she should follow him. She rose
and followed him, touching him from time to time. Once she stopped, and
he turned to find out what was bothering her, even if he felt that he
couldn't stand much more of the almost solid dust in his lungs and had
to get out to open air or strangle. Then he knew that the woman was
Amra, for she was carrying a child in her arms. The child had a scarf
around her head and, as he remembered, Paxi was the only infant so
dressed.
Coughing violently, he rose to his feet, pulling Amra to hers, and
swiftly walked toward where he hoped the exit was. He knew he'd fallen
on his face in the general direction of the doorway; if he kept in a
straight line he might make it without wandering off to one side.
He found soon enough that he was going just opposite, for he fell
headlong over a body on the floor. When he got up again, he ran his
hands over the body. The skin was crusty, scaly. Aga's burned corpse.
The cutlass was lying by her side, assuring him of her identity.
Re-oriented, he turned back, still pulling Amra by the hand. This time
he ran into a wall, but he had his free hand stretched out in front of
him for just such an event. Frantically, he groped to his left until
he came to the corner of the room. Then, knowing that the doorway lay
back to his right, he turned and felt along the metal until he came to
the opening. He plunged through it, almost fell into the other room,
which was as dark and dusty as the one he'd just left. He trotted on
ahead, bumped into another wall, groped to his right, found the next
exit and ran through that. Here the air was much more free of dust. He
could actually make out outlines of his companions as the light was
penetrating the fainter haze.
Nevertheless he and the others were coughing and weeping as if they
were trying to eject lungs and eyeballs alike. Spasm after spasm shook
them.
Green decided that this room wasn't really much better than the others,
so he led Amra and Paxi around the right-angled corner and into the
dark tunnel. Here his violent rackings began to quiet down and by rapid
blinking, which forced tears, he cleaned his eyes of much of the dust.
Anxiously, he peered down the passageway toward its end, where the cave
mouth formed a dim arch in the moonlight outside.
It was as he'd feared. Somebody stood there, outlined in the beams,
bent forward, peering in.
He thought that it must be the priestess, for the figure was slight and
the hair was pulled up on top of the head in a great Psyche knot with a
feather stuck through it. Moreover, around her feet were four or five
cats.
His coughing betrayed him, for the priestess suddenly whirled and
trotted off on her sticklike legs. Green dropped Amra's hand and ran,
at the same time drawing his stiletto from his belt, as he'd lost his
cutlass during the explosion. He had to stop the priestess, though he
didn't know what good it would do. The savages sooner or later would
come to the sanctuary to ask if she'd seen any of the refugees. And if
they couldn't find her they would at once suspect what had happened.
The chances were that they already knew. Surely, the noise of the blast
must have penetrated even to their ears.
Or had it? The air waves had to round several perpendicular turns
before reaching the cave mouth, and it might be that the noise had
seemed much greater to Green than it actually was because he'd been so
close to it. Perhaps there was some hope.
He ran into the clearing before the cave mouth. The sun was just coming
over the horizon, so he could see things clearly. The old woman was
nowhere in sight. The only live things were several drunken cats. One
of these began to rub its back against Green's leg and purred loudly.
Automatically, he stooped down and caressed it, though his gaze
flickered everywhere for a sign of the priestess. The door of her hut
was open and since it was so small he could be certain that she had no
room in there to hide from him. She must have run off down the path.
If so, she wasn't making any noise about it. There were no outcries
from her to call her companions to her help.
He found her lying face down on the path, halfway down the hill. At
first he thought she was playing possum, so he turned her over, his
stiletto ready to shut off any outcry. A glance at her hanging jaw and
ashen color convinced him that her possum-playing days were over. At
first, he thought she'd tripped and broken her neck, but an examination
disproved this. The only thing he could think of was that her old heart
had given away under the sudden fright and the stress of running.
Something brushed his ankles. So startled was he, so convinced that a
spear had just missed him, he leaped into the air and whirled around.
Then he saw that it was only the cat that had rubbed itself against
him when he'd first come out of the tunnel. It was a large female cat
with a beautiful long black silky coat and with golden eyes. It exactly
resembled the Earth cat and was probably descended from the same
ancestors as its terrestrial counterpart. Wherever Homo sapiens of the
unthinkably long ago had penetrated he seemed to have taken his canine
and feline pets.
"You like me, huh?" said Green. "Well, I like you, too, but I'm not
going to if you keep on scaring me. I've been through enough tonight
for a lifetime."
The cat, purring, paced delicately toward him.
"Maybe you can do me some good," he said and lifted the cat to his
shoulder, where she crouched, vibrating with contentment.
"I don't know what you see in me," he confided softly to her. "I must
be a frightful-looking object, what with being covered with dust, and
my eyes red and raw and running. But then, you're not so delightful
yourself, what with your beery breath blowing in my face. I like you
very much, What's-your-name. What _is_ your name? Let's call you Lady
Luck. After all, when I rubbed you I found the priestess dead. If she
hadn't died she'd have got away to warn the cannibals. And obviously,
you, her luck, had deserted her for me. So Lady Luck it will be. Let's
go back up the hill and see what's happened to the rest of my friends."
He found Amra sitting down at the cave's mouth, cuddling Paxi in an
effort to quiet her. Nine others were there, too, Grizquetr, Soon,
Miran, Inzax, three women, two little girls. The rest, he presumed,
were lying dead or unconscious in the altar room. They made a
dirty-looking, red-eyed, weary group, not good for much except lying
down and passing out.
"Look," he said, "we have to have sleep, whatever else happens. We'll
go back into the first chamber and get some there, and...."
As one, the others protested that nothing would get them to return
anywhere near that horrible fiend-haunted room. Green was at a loss.
He thought he knew exactly what had happened, but he just could not
explain to these people in terms they'd understand. And they probably
would have a dark distrust of him from then on.
He decided to take the simple, if untrue, explanation.
"Undoubtedly Aga provoked a host of demons by striking at the wall
behind the altar," he said. "I tried to warn her. You all heard me. But
those demons won't bother us again, for we are now under the protection
of the cat, the cannibals' totem. Moreover it is the nature of such
beings that, once they've released their fury and taken some victims,
they are harmless, quiescent, for a long time after. It takes time for
them to build up strength enough to hurt human beings again."
They swallowed this offering as they would never have his other
explanation.
"If you will lead the way," they said, "we will return. We put our
lives in your hands."
Before going into the cave he paused to take another survey. From his
spot in the clearing, which was almost on the top of the hill, he could
look over the tree tops and see most of the island, except where other
hills barred his view. The island had stopped moving and had settled
down against the plain itself. Now, to the untutored eye, the entire
mass looked like a clump of dirt, rocks and vegetation for some reason
rising from the grassy seas. It would remain so until dusk, when it
would again launch itself upon its five-mile-an-hour journey to the
east. And once having reached a certain point there, it would reverse
itself and begin its nocturnal pilgrimage toward the west. Back and
forth, shuttling for how many thousands of years? What was its purpose,
and whom had its builders been? Surely they could not have conceived in
their wildest dreams of its present use, a mobile fortress for a tribe
of cannibals?
Nor could they have seen to what uses their dust-collectors would be
put. They couldn't have guessed that, millennia thence, men ignorant of
their originally intended purpose would be using the devices as part of
their religious ritual and of human sacrifice.
Green left the others in the room next to the one where the explosion
had taken place. They lay down on the hard floor and at once went to
sleep. He, however, felt that there were certain things that had to be
done and that he was the only one physically capable of doing them.
20
Though he hated to go back into the altar room, he forced himself. The
scene of carnage was bad enough, but not as repulsive as he'd expected.
Dust had thrown a gray veil of mercy over the bodies. They looked like
peaceful gray statues; most of them had not burned on the outside but
had died because they'd breathed the first lung-scorching wave of air
directly. Nevertheless, despite the look of peace and antiquity, the
odor of burned flesh from Aga hung heavy. Lady Luck bristled and arched
her back, and for a moment Green thought she was going to leap from his
shoulder and run away.
He said, "Take it easy," then decided that she must have smelled
this often before. Her present reaction was based on past episodes;
probably, there had been great excitement then. The cats, being taboo
animals, must have been figures of some importance in the sacrificial
ceremonies.
Cautiously, the man approached the wall of dirt behind the altar, even
though he did not think there would be any danger for some time to
come. The altar itself was comparatively undamaged. Surprised at this,
he ran his hand over it and found out that it was composed of baked
clay, hard as rock. The chair and metal rod had not been torn loose.
Both were tightly bolted down with huge studs which he supposed had
been taken off wrecked 'rollers.
The victims that were tied in the chair by the savages must have been
sitting looking at the audience, so that their backs were to the wall
itself. That meant that when the rod was dropped to make contact
between the wall and victim, the discharge only burned the sacrifice's
head. Evidence of that was the fact that only skulls were stacked
around the altar. The charred head was severed and the body carted
outside to one destination or another.
What puzzled Green was how the audience managed to escape the fury of
the blast and of the dust, even if they stood at the farthest end of
the big room. Determined to find out what happened at those times, he
returned to the doorway. Just around its corner, in the second room, he
discovered what he'd not noticed before, probably because it was placed
so upright and so firmly against one side of the wall. And because its
back, which was turned away from the wall, was also made of gray metal.
When he switched it around so he could see its other side, he was
staring into a mirror about six feet high and four feet wide.
Now he could visualize the ceremony. The victim was strapped into the
chair and a rope was tied around the rod. Everybody but the priestess,
or whoever conducted the rites, retreated from the altar room. The
conductor himself, or herself, then stood in the doorway and released
the cord. Before the rod could make contact, the conductor had stepped
around the corner. And there the audience saw in the mirror, placed
in the doorway so it reflected the interior of the altar room, the
ravening discharge of a tremendous electrostatic blast. And immediately
afterward, no doubt, they saw nothing because of the dust that would
fill the two rooms.
Strange and strong magic to the savages. What myths they must have
built about this room, what tales of horrible and powerful gods or
demons imprisoned in that wall of dirt! Surely their old women must
whisper to the wide-eyed children stories of how the Great Cat-Spirit
had been caught by their legendary strong man and savior, some analog
to Hercules or Gilgamesh or Thor, and how the Cat-Spirit was the
tribe's to keep prisoner with their magic and to appease from time to
time with human kills from other tribes lest it become so angry it
burst through the wall of earth and devour everybody upon the floating
island!
Green knew that it was hopeless to try to dig through that wall, even
if it would be safe for days. It might only be several feet thick, or
it might be twenty or more.
But however thick it was, he bet that anybody who had the tools, time
and strength to excavate would find, embedded somewhere in that mass,
several large dust-collectors. He didn't know what shape they'd take,
because that would depend on the culture that had built them, and their
tastes in decorations would differ from Green's multimillennia-later
society. But if they had architectural ideas similar to present-day
Terrans they would have constructed the collectors in the shape of
busts or of animals' heads or even of bookcases with false backs of
books filling them, books that would in reality have been both chargers
and filters. The busts or books would have been pierced with many tiny
holes, and through these holes the charged particles of dust would have
drifted. Once inside the collectors, they would have been burned.
Looking at the blank dirt before him, Green could see what had happened
through the ages. Some part of the burning mechanism had gone
wrong--as was the custom of mechanisms everywhere. But the charging
effect had continued. And though the dust had piled up around the
collectors, the extraordinarily powerful fields had continued to work
even through the thick blanket. In the beginning, of course, their
field could not have caused any human being harm. But these batteries
must have been built to adjust to whatever demand was made of them,
though their builders, of course, could have had no idea of how great
that demand would some day be. Nevertheless it had come, and the
batteries had been equal to it. By the time the savages had found this
room they were blocked off by this imposing wall.
Through the death of their fellows they had discovered that touching
the wall caused a terrible discharge of electrostatic electricity. The
rest of the apparatus for execution and the ritual that went with it
was foregone and logical, religiously speaking.
Green swore with frustration. How he would love to get through that
dirt before another charge built up! On the other side must be another
doorway, and it must lead to the fuel and control rooms for this whole
island. If he could get inside and there figure out the controls, he'd
turn this island upside down and shake off the man-eating monsters.
There'd be no holding him then!
He remembered the story of Samdroo, the Tailor Who Turned Sailor. The
legend went that Samdroo, his 'roller wrecked upon just such a roaming
island as this one, had wandered into just such a cave and through
rooms like these. But he'd found no barrier of electrically charged
dirt and had walked into a room which contained many strange things.
One of them was a great eye that allowed Samdroo to see in it what was
happening outside the cave. Another was a board which contained many
round faces over which raced little squiggles and lines. Of course, the
story had its own explanations for what these things were, but Green
could hardly fail to recognize TV, oscilloscopes and other instruments.
Unfortunately his knowledge was going to do him no good. He wasn't
going to get through the dirt. Nor was he to be allowed time for
excavation and exploration. Every minute on this island meant that he
was traveling back to Quotz and its revengeful Duchess and getting
farther from Estorya, where the two spacemen and their ship were. He
had to find a way of getting off this place and onto some means of
transportation.
He left the death chamber and went into the next room. After slumping
down against the wall, between Amra with Paxi in her arms, and Inzax
with Grizquetr in hers, he chewed some dried meat. Lady Luck meowed for
some and he gladly gave her all she wanted. When he'd swallowed all he
could hold without bursting and had washed that down with great drafts
of the warm and sweet beer taken from the priestess's hut, he closed
his eyes. Now, it was up to his Vigilante to take the food and rebuild
his wasted tissue, throw off the effects of autointoxication, tone
his tired muscles, relax his too-taut nerves, readjust his hormonal
balance....
21
Green dreamed that his mouth and nose were clogged with dirt and that
he was suffocating. He woke to find that, while there was no earth upon
him, he was having a difficult time getting his breath. Remedying that
by removing the cat from his face, he rose.
"What do you want?" he asked her. She was mewing and striking gently at
him.
She padded toward the doorway to the outside, so he imagined that she
wished him to follow her. Grasping his cutlass, he walked after her and
out to the tunnel that led to the cave mouth. Not until then did he
hear the booming of cannon, far away.
The cat meowed plaintively. Evidently, she'd heard cannonfire before
and had not liked the results.
Once out of the cave he stopped to look up at the sun. It was on its
downward path from the zenith. About four o'clock in the afternoon.
He'd slept about ten hours.
Unable to see much from where he stood, he climbed up the rocks outside
the cave and soon stood upon the very top of the hill, a little
tableland about ten feet square. From there he commanded as good a
view of the island as anyone could get.
Tacking around the periphery of the island were three long, low,
black-hulled 'rollers with over-large wheels and scarlet sails.
Occasionally a lance of red spurted from one of the vessel's ports, a
boom reached Green's ears a few seconds later and he would see the iron
ball climb up and up, then fall toward the village. A tree around the
clearing would lose a limb, or a spurt of dust would show where a ball
landed in the clearing itself. Two of the long houses had big holes in
their roofs. The village itself was deserted, as no one with good sense
would have remained there. None of the cannibals were visible, but that
wasn't surprising, considering how thick the woods were.
Green hoped the Vings would land soon and clean out the savages.
That would leave him and his party a clear field, unless the pirates
investigated the cave in the same day. If they didn't, then the
refugees could leave the island and take to the plains under cover of
the night.
Anxiously, Green traced the path that led from the hilltop where he
stood and wound down to the village. It was a narrow trail and he often
lost sight of it. But always there was a difference in the shading of
the tree tops along the trail and the rest of the forest. With his eye
he could follow the shading to the village and beyond, toward the back
or western part of the island.
It was here that he came across the first sign of hope he had had
since the wreck of the _Bird of Fortune_. It was a small break in the
vegetation, which ran uninterrupted to the very edge of the island, a
shelf of seemingly smooth earth, almost hidden from him by the slope of
the terrain. Indeed, he could barely make it out and might have missed
it altogether, but he saw the masts of three small 'rollers projecting
from above the slope and followed them down toward the hulls. All three
were yachts, obviously not of islander make. Beyond the stolen craft
were the uprights of davits. These were behind a wall of branches,
camouflage for anybody outside the island but visible to those on the
inside.
It was all Green could do to keep from whooping with joy. Now he and
his party wouldn't have to cast themselves on foot on the dangerous
plains. They could sail in comparative safety. Now, while the cannibals
were cowering helplessly under the bombardment Green could lead his
people through the woods to the yachts. When dusk came and the island
began moving again they could lower a yacht from the davits and set
sail.
He went back to the cave entrance, where he found everybody awake,
waiting for him.
He told them what he'd seen and added, "If the Vings come aboard we'll
take advantage of the confusion and escape."
Miran looked at the sun and shook his head. "The Vings won't attack
now. It's too close to dusk. They'll want a full day for fighting.
They'll follow the island tonight. When dawn comes and the island stops
they'll board."
"I bow to your superior experience," Green said. "Only I'd like to ask
you one thing. Why don't the Vings launch their small craft at night
and land boarding parties from them?"
Miran looked surprised. "No one does that! It's unthinkable! Don't you
know that at night the plains abound in spirits and demons? The Vings
wouldn't think of taking a chance on what the magic of the savages
might unloose against them in the darkness."
"I knew of the general attitude, but it had slipped my mind," admitted
Green. "But if this is so, why did you all wander about this place the
night the _Bird_ was wrecked?"
"That was a situation where we preferred the somewhat uncertain
possibility of stumbling across demons to the certainty of being killed
by the cannibals," said Miran.
"To be honest," said Amra, "I was too scared to think of ghosts. If I
had I might have stayed where I was.... No, I wouldn't either. I've
never seen a ghost, but I had seen those savages."
"Well," said Green, "all of you might as well make up your mind that,
come ghosts, demons, or men, we're walking through the dark tonight.
All those too scared will have to stay behind."
He began issuing orders, and in a short time he had the sleepy-eyed,
bedraggled and dirty-looking party ready. After that, he turned to
watch the bombardment.
By then it had largely ceased. Only occasionally did one of the vessels
loose a single cannon shot. The rest of the time they spent in tacking
back and forth and in running up close to the very edge of the island.
"I think they are trying the temper of the island's inhabitants," Green
said. "They don't know whether the woods conceal a hundred savages or
a thousand, or whether they're armed with cannons and muskets or just
with spears. They want to draw fire, so they can get an estimate of
what they're facing."
He turned to Miran. "Which reminds me, why is it that the natives don't
use guns? They must have a chance to get their hands on many from the
wrecks."
The fat merchant shrugged and rolled his one good eye to indicate that
he didn't really know but was making a guess.
"Probably they've a taboo against using firearms. Whatever the reason,
they're evidently suffering because they neglect them. Look how few
they are. Only fifty men! They must have lost quite a few through
raids from other savage tribes, both from those who live upon the
plain itself and from those who live on other roaming islands. They're
down to the point now where they must die out within a generation,
even without help from such as those," he said, pointing to the Ving
'rollers.
"Yes, and I suppose that during the daytime, when the island is
stopped, grass cats and dire dogs board it. These must take their toll
of the humans."
He gazed again at the red sails and wheels of the Vings. "I'd think
that those pirates would take every island they could and would use
them as bases from which to operate."
"They do," said Amra. "For a generation now the Vings have been
scouring the plains, locating the islands and exterminating the savages
on them. Then they've fortified the islands, so that you might say that
today the Xurdimur is dominated by them. But there's a drawback to an
island as a harbor. No large 'roller may get very close except in the
daylight. They have to put out to grass every night and follow their
base at a safe distance until dawn. However, though the Vings are well
established on many roamers, they're often attacked by the navies of
various nations and sometimes driven off. Then the nation that takes
possession of the island has a nice little base. And, of course, quite
often they use it to launch their own piratical ventures against the
craft of countries at peace with them.
"Oh, the Xurdimur is a land where every man's hand is against the
other, and the devil take the ones with short sail! A man may make his
fortune or break his heart, all in a night's work. But, then, you know
that only too well."
Green interrupted, "We'll leave them, and the natives, too, when
moonlight gets here. I only hope that there aren't other Ving craft in
the neighborhood."
"What the gods will, happens," replied Miran. His sad face reflected
the belief that if he, the favorite of Mennirox, could come to grief,
then Green could expect even worse.
When dusk came, Green walked from the cave into the dark and hard rain.
Behind him came Amra, one hand upon his shoulder, the other supporting
Paxi. The rest were stretched out in a line behind her, each person's
hand on the shoulder of the one ahead.
The black cat was underneath Green's coat, riding in a large pocket of
his shirt. She had made it plain to him that where he went, she went.
And Green, to avoid a big fuss and also because he was beginning to
feel very affectionate toward her, allowed her to come along.
The descent from the hilltop was an anxious and stumbling trip. Green,
after ten minutes of groping along the path, had to acknowledge he did
not know where he was. So many windings had the path taken that he
did not know whether he was going east, north, south, or in the right
direction, west.
Actually, it didn't really matter, as long as it brought him to the
edge of the island. He could skirt the edge until he arrived at the
fleet craft that would give them a chance for flight.
The trouble was in finding that rim. He was afraid that it would be
possible to wander in circles and figure eights until moonlight. Then,
though they'd be able to orient themselves, they'd also be exposed to
the view of the cannibals. And if they found themselves, say, at the
eastern edge, their journey around would be perilous indeed.
Occasional lightning flashed, and then he could make out his immediate
environment. These brief revelations weren't much help. All he could
see were the solid-seeming walls of tree trunks and bushes.