“I have not seen their like before.”
“And I have seen enough! The sooner we get back to the ship, the better. If Turpyn gets there first, he could try to take off.”
“A possibility,” Yolyos agreed.
“Come on then!” Andas did not move until he was sure that the Salariki was coming.
But as they went, the other still dallied, snatching a handful of leaves there, one or two blooms here, until he carried in the crook of his arm a mass of highly scented growth.
Elys still lingered ankle-deep in the pool. Her thoroughly soaked overall clung to her. But she seemed to relish that instead of finding damp clothing a discomfort.
“The ship! If we ever want to get away from here, we must make sure of the ship!” Andas tried to make his fear plain.
The other two acted as if they were drugged, each by his own form of pleasure. Finally Andas urged them on before him as a Yakkan herd hound might round up a flighty flock to keep it moving.
They retraced the route Yolyos had opened and so came to the field. The ship’s ramp was still firmly planted out. Seeing that, Andas gave a sigh of relief. At least the ship was not sealed against them. Of any of the others there was no sign at all. Still that passage across the open made them targets either for an enemy in the ship or one in hiding, and it was one of the longest walks Andas felt he had ever taken. Neither of his companions was in the least hurry. Short of pushing or dragging, Andas could not make them alter their pace. Elys was singing, a low, contented hum, drawing strands of her wet hair through her webbed fingers, while Yolyos did nothing but bend his head to take long sniffs of the mingled scents of his huge bouquet. A less alert company, Andas fumed, he had yet to see. Show Elys water, Yolyos some flowers, and they would be out of a fight from the start.
There was no sign of Grasty or Tsiwon near the ramp either. They climbed that, Andas crabwise so he could keep watch on the edge of the jungle, expecting trouble and Turpyn to erupt from there. He did not accept the fact that the Veep would give up so easily.
They found Grasty standing over the bunk on which lay the Arch Chief of Naul, his eyes closed, his age-pinched face more sunken and skull-like than ever. The councilor looked up as they came in.
“About time,” he wheezed as if he had not yet recovered from the blow Turpyn had dealt. “He”—he nodded to Tsiwon—“has it bad—some kind of seizure. Went down as if he were blasted.”
The Arch Chief looked dead, but when Andas examined him, he found a faint slow beat of pulse. Again panic touched him. A trained medic might be able to bring the old man back to consciousness, even save that spark of life. But they had no medic. To his surprise, it was Elys, steaming with damp, who moved up to push him impatiently away.
Her hands were sure, as if she knew exactly what she was doing, the fingers of the right just touching Tsiwon’s forehead, those of the left his breast above the faltering heart. Her eyes were closed as if she concentrated or listened to what the others could not hear.
Andas was impressed by her air of assurance, enough not to disturb her. After a long moment of silence she opened her eyes.
“His heart is weak. He must go into san-sleep until we can get him to a healer.”
San-sleep meant nothing to Andas, but a man with a weak heart could certainly not survive a takeoff. He said as much. Elys shook her head.
“In san-sleep he can. And here what chance has he? I do not believe you will find a healer out there.” She pointed with her chin. In that she was right.
“But how do we get him in this san-sleep?” Andas wanted to know.
“I shall sing him,” she answered. And having nothing better to offer, Andas agreed.
Elys shifted her position to the head of the bunk. Then using both of her hands to cup Tsiwon’s head, the fingers spread to the widest extent, Elys began a low and monotonous humming note. Three times she gave that. Then looked to them.
“Go hence now. You might be caught also—if to a lesser degree.”
They urged Grasty, in spite of his protests and groans, up to the control cabin, leaving Elys with her patient. As Andas went, he could hear a continuous wailing note, which made him uncomfortable.
“Do you think she can do it?” he asked as he joined the others.
Yolyos answered. “Who knows? Without a medic we shall do the best we can. It is a pity that survival techniques were not included in the past training we received. In fact, it becomes very plain that much education can be considered uesless when one is faced with a situation such as this.”
He had laid his untidy harvest down on the astrogator’s seat and gone to the tape file, flicking it open. There were three inside, and he hooked them out with a claw. Andas saw again the symbols, save that the one for Inyanga was missing.
“Do we choose Naul now?” the Salariki wanted to know.
“No!” Grasty heaved himself up and tried to grab at the tape case. “Not Naul!”
“Now I wonder why? What do you know about Naul?” Yolyos’s cat eyes were dangerously narrowed. “You made a deal with Turpyn—what do you know about Naul that you do not want to go there?”
The man picked at the waistline bulge of his coverall. His natural reddish flush was overlaid with a gray look.
“Naul—Naul is overrun by the Jauavum Empire.”
“The what?” Andas stared. “But Tsiwon—he wouldn’t want to head into that—”
“He—he was the one who started it all!” Grasty replied. Then in a burst of words as if he must tell it, he said, “Iylas Tsiwon gave the orders that brought the Jauavum fleet first to Naul. Everyone in the Eighth Sector knows it. He need only to say his traitor name on any world there and he’d be torn to pieces!”
“And when did this treason of his happen?” asked Yolyos.
“In 2250.”
“But Tsiwon said he could not remember past 2246.”
“He said!” Grasty gave a nasty laugh. “Any man who has made his name stink over half the galaxy would say anything.”
“No!” Andas cut in again. “Don’t you see, if Turpyn is right and we have all been put in storage so doubles could take our places, that was what must have happened. Tsiwon’s double—the android—was the traitor. You,” he demanded now of Grasty, “if you knew what happened in 2250, what was the last date you remember?”
“The year 2273. But you mean we could have been in that place for years?” His voice shrilled higher and higher. “But Thrisk—what has happened on Thrisk?”
“You might well ask,” Yolyos said dryly, “seeing what apparently happened on Naul after Tsiwon was substituted. If that is what did happen. So we have 2273 now—”
Andas was busy with subtraction. Forty-three years galactic time! But how could a man—it must have been stass-sleep. Yes, in the earlier days before hyper space travel, men had managed to sleep for centuries in stass while the early First Ships made their blind galactic voyages. Forty-three years—and how many more? How long had Grasty been one of their company?
“Turpyn can remember 2265,” Yolyos continued. “And he expected this to be a going port. Instead, there is every indication that it has not been used for a good many years. According to your dating, I myself have been in storage somewhere for seventy-three years, Elys for the longest period of all—seventy-eight. We shall, I am afraid, have to face up to the fact that whatever our absences were supposed to accomplish has long since come to pass, like Tsiwon’s apparent treachery in Naul. I—I wonder what my double did for the trade mission. And you, Prince, perhaps your double now rules your empire in another’s plan. We cannot be sure of anything until we learn more. But suppose you tell me, Grasty, what do you know of Sargol or Inyanga or—”
The Chief Councilor shook his head. “Nothing—I never heard of this Sargol nor Inyanga. The galaxy is too wide. A man could spend a lifetime voyaging and yet not visit a fraction of the inhabited worlds—you know that. I know about Naul because it was Eighth Sector and Thrisk is Ninth. We have had refugee ships
from the Jauavum invasion.”
“Well, we need not have thought that repatriation under the circumstances was going to be easy,” Yolyos commented. “But we had all better be prepared to face some disaster upon our return. Do you still want to go to Inyanga, Prince?”
“Yes!” Andas supposed that the Salariki’s speculations and his own fears were the truth. But still he had to know. Only what if he returned to find he was a traitor, or worse, as was old Tsiwon? More than ever he must make sure that his visit to the Triple Towers was in secret until he knew the truth.
“You’ll have to find the tape first,” Grasty pointed out. “It might be better to take a chance on one of those other two.”
Yolyos had already clicked up the fastening of one. He brought out the coil of tape and turned it over to inspect it before returning it to its case. Then he did the same with the second. Holding that out to Andas, he pointed with claw tip to a very small symbol on its spool.
“Inyanga?”
“Yes! How did you—”
“Guess that Turpyn might have switched cases for hiding? In the tight quarters we have here, it would be the most obvious way of keeping it safe. Remember he thought he was going to set us down in territory where he had friends—he might want to use the other tape later. If our kidnaping had something originally to do with payoffs to the Guild for our disappearances, he could believe that he might hold us here and try for a second sum to dispose or deliver us—whichever paid the best.”
“Then we can take off for Inyanga! But Turpyn, what about him?”
They were back now to one of the oldest and most fundamental laws of space flight. You did not abandon a fellow spacer, no matter if he was your worst enemy, on an alien world. But if Turpyn did not want to be caught, to lift off in their ship, how in the world were they going to find him? It would take days, maybe weeks, and a much larger and better-equipped search force than they could muster to find him against his will.
“Yes, Turpyn—”
“Let him rot here!” Grasty snarled.
“A fate he may well deserve,” Yolyos returned. “But one we shall not grant unless he asks for it. Yet I do not think we can stay here very long waiting for him to change his mind. And we cannot hunt him tonight.”
Andas looked to the visa-screen. The Salariki was right. Shadows were creeping from the jungle like dark fingers reaching for the ship. To venture into that wilderness in the dark was folly. They had no trails, no knowledge of what hostile native life might now lair in the ruins.
Elys came up to them carrying E-ration tubes from their supplies.
“Tsiwon?” Andas asked.
“He sleeps, but the life spark is very low. I do not know whether he can survive the voyage. Yet he must if he is to have any hope of a future.”
Andas watched her hand around the tubes. Seventy-eight years according to their reckoning! Yet she seemed a girl his own age, maybe younger, though one could never be sure of the true age of another species. It could be a short life span or one as long as the Zacathans who had outlived empires. Should he tell her of their new discoveries or what Grasty said had happened to Naul, of how long she might have been separated from her own people? He decided against that for the present.
It was an uncomfortable night, and Andas got little sleep. They had turned on the nose light of the ship, thinking perhaps Turpyn might be honestly lost and could use that for a beacon, though they drew in the ramp as a logical protection. The visa-screen remained on, and twice Andas started up at a spark of light appearing on that, thinking maybe Turpyn had found some planet dwellers and was returning. But each time he watched the erratic actions of that spark he was forced to conclude it must mark the flight of some luminous night creature.
By morning he was even more tired than he had been when he had dropped into that astrogator’s chair. But it would seem that his unrest had not been shared by his companions, for Grasty’s snores and the Salariki’s even breathing were those of sleepers. Andas lay for a while watching the change of view on the screen.
A dark hump moved out into the field. Andas darted a finger to a button to freeze and enlarge the scene. A man crawling? Turpyn injured? No, it was a beast coming slowly because it grazed at some small plants that had sprung up among the old burn scars. From a long, pointed muzzle a blue tongue snapped out, curled about a tuft of the growth, jerked it loose from the soil with a sharp tug, and brought it back to the waiting mouth, all with methodical regularity like a servo robot.
The humped body was shiny and dark, and the legs were very short, but its tail did not taper to the end. In fact, that reversed the usual pattern by uniting with the body in a narrow portion that then thickened and widened into a club. And the club seemed to have a coating of quills, which the creature either consciously or unconsciously flexed at intervals, so that they bristled out in an ominous display.
But it was what was caught on those quills that riveted Andas’s full attention. Something fluttered, a small flag, bedraggled and stained. And that appeared also to annoy the creature, for it turned now and then (with difficulty because of its short neck and heavy shoulders) to snap out its tongue, as if it would so pull loose the rag from its quills.
Some freak of the wind finally brought it within reach of the creature’s tongue, and the animal tore it loose and mouthed it. And then, with a very readable disgust, stamped upon it and turned aside, to eat its way through another patch of vegetation.
Andas was already on the ship’s ladder. He descended as fast as he could, triggered the ramp controls, and then was out in the morning, heading for that rag. It was a wet mass, but he used stems of plants to straighten it out on the ground, only to have his suspicion proved correct. Chewed, torn, muddied, it was also otherwise stained. And it was part of a coverall—Turpyn’s.
The tracks of the animal were easy to read. These could be back-trailed. They must be. Andas started for the ship.
Grasty refused to go, and they overruled Elys when she volunteered. So it was Yolyos and Andas, with all the caution they could summon, who went down that trail. It led them to the buildings engulfed in the jungle. In the center of what had once been a courtyard they found what they sought.
It was not good to see, and they scooped a hurried grave, both working as swiftly as they could to get it out of sight; “it”—because what lay there had no resemblance now to a man. The Salariki kept sniffing, and when they had finished, he indicated one of the doorways that gaped about them like toothless dead mouths.
“In there—a lair—the smell is strong. He must have disturbed it. Perhaps it has young hidden. We had better move out before it returns. If I only had a blaster—”
His hands worked as if he wanted to draw that desired weapon out of thin air. They had searched the ship, hoping to find some cache of arms, without any success. To be bare-handed in such a situation made a man feel singularly naked. Andas agreed, ready to return to the ship as quickly as possible.
“What was he hunting, do you suppose?” Had Turpyn hoped to discover something in those dark interiors—a weapon, a message?
“Does it matter? Death found him. And we had better make sure it does not come sniffing after us,” returned Yolyos.
They trotted back to the ship, watching both sides of the trail, alert to any sound that would herald the return of Turpyn’s killer. The strength of the creature in relation to its size must be immense. Of the efficiency of its armament, they had had ghastly evidence.
But their problem was now solved. There was nothing to keep them here on this forgotten world—they could lift for Inyanga. In spite of what he had just been doing and the horror of their find, Andas was lighter of heart as they climbed the ramp. He was going home! Though what he would find there—well, there was no use hunting trouble. It had a way of presenting itself unbidden. At least once he was on Inyanga, he knew the kinds of danger he would have to face. One always had the idea one could cope with the known. It was the unknown—like that Turpyn had met
in the dark—against which one had no defense.
“You found him?” Elys met them at the life level.
“Dead,” Andas told her, but never would he let her know how.
“Tsiwon also,” she said then. “I found him so when I went to him a little while ago.”
Two of their number gone, and perhaps in the end those might be the lucky ones. But Andas was too young to accept such a view as that for more than a fleeting moment. He climbed purposefully to the control cabin. The sooner they lifted, the better. He found the Salariki there before him, the tape in his hands. But he looked to Andas searchingly before he fed it into the autopilot.
“You are sure, Prince? What if you find such a world as Tsiwon might have faced had his First Ancestress not been kind to him, as Turpyn found here?”
“At least it will be a world I know.” Andas spoke his thought aloud. “And with a world I know, I have a chance. Be sure”—he faced the Salariki soberly—“that all I can do to aid you, the rest of you, to your own homes, that I shall do. As an Imperial prince—”
“If you still are an Imperial prince,” Yolyos reminded him. “Count no heads until you take them and set them above your doorway. Which is a bloodstained saying of my own people, relating to barbarous customs now followed only by the wild men of the outer plains. But still perhaps it fits too well the present situation. Heads may still roll—be sure that one of them is not yours!”
Andas tried to match the slight smile of the other, but he was afraid that what he produced was closer to a wry grimace. “I shall take every precaution.”
Already he was planning ahead. The trip tape would set them down without any choice of port on their part. And the public ports on Inyanga were policed. He must find some way to escape official notice until he could learn what awaited in the Triple Towers. If he had knowledge, if any of them did, of how to bring the ship in on manned controls, they could land secretly. But there was no chance of that. The one man who might have had such knowledge (though he concealed it if he did) they were leaving behind them as part of the earth of this world.