“Go in power, one who knows the song of the wind, the whisper of growing things, the minds of beasts and birds. Go in power; do what must be done. In this moment the war arrow is balanced upon a finger. So light a thing as this wind may wreck a world.”
It was more than Hosteen had dared hope the Drummer would ever grant him—not the blessing and good will for a warrior departing into danger but the outright promise of one wizard to another who also dealt in things unseen, a promise of power to be added to power.
In return, he accorded Ukurti the salute of upraised palms, which was the greeting of equal to equal, before he turned and started for the waiting tunnel mouth.
But in his hurry the Terran was also cautious. Ukurti had said nothing of any other natives being on the mountain, but that was no reason to disregard the possibility of more Drummers or warriors being drawn to the fire about the LB.
Hosteen reached the ledge of the tunnel without being sighted or trailed. And there he met Surra’s warning. The stranger was returning in haste to the outer world. Coming to see the result of the fire attack?
The Terran had the grenades. But a dead enemy could not talk and might well provide a martyr whose influence after death could unleash destruction across the plains. A prisoner, not a dead man, was what Hosteen desired. With Surra’s aid he could have that future captive already boxed. Only—
This was like running against an invisible wall. There was no pain such as the sonic barrier had spun around those who strove to pass it. No pain—only immobility, a freezing of every muscle against which Hosteen fought vainly. As helpless as he had been in the net of the Norbies, so was he again, held so for the coming of the enemy.
Helpless as to body, yes, but not in mind. Hosteen gave Surra an order. How far away was that chase—the man running to inspect his catch, the cat, unseen, unsensed by her quarry, padding at an ever quickening trot behind?
Just as Hosteen could plan, he could also hear. Ukurti had not been alone on the mountain. The whistle of more than one Norbie reached him, unmuffled by the morning wind. He did not credit the Shosonna medicine man with any treachery—such a promise as the other had given him when they parted would damn the Drummer who made it in false faith. No, his being held for the kill was not Ukurti’s doing.
Surra—and Baku. He must try again to reach the eagle. Cat and bird might be his only defensive weapons.
The cat he made contact with—the bird, no answer. And now the stranger broke from the tunnel mouth.
Taller than the Terran, his skin whitely fair under the paint of the natives, his hair ruddy bright, he stood there breathing hard. With both hands, he held at breast level a sphere that Hosteen eyed apprehensively. It was too like the antiperso grenades.
Then it was the other’s eyes, rather than his hands and their burden, that drew the Beast Master’s attention. Back at the Rehab Separation Center more than a year ago, he had seen that look in many eyes, too many eyes. Terran units brought in from active Service at the close of the war to discover their world gone—families, homes, everything lost—had had men in their ranks with such eyes. Men had gone mad and turned their weapons on base personnel, on each other, on themselves. And taking a cue from that past, Hosteen schooled his voice to the bark of an official demand.
“Name, rank, serial number, planet!”
There was a stir far down in the set glare of those eyes. The other’s lips moved soundlessly, and then he spoke aloud.
“Farver Dean, Tech third rank, Eu 790, Cosmos” he replied in Galactic basic.
A tech of the third rank, 700 in his Service—not only a trained scientist but one of genius level! No wonder this man had been able to understand and use some of the secrets of the Cavern people.
Dean advanced another step or two, studying Hosteen. The face paint disguised much of his expression, but his attitude was one of puzzlement.
“Who are you?” he asked in return.
“Hosteen Storm, Beast Master, AM 25, Terra.” Hosteen used the same old formula for reply.
“Beast Master,” the other repeated. “Oh, of the Psych-Anth boys?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing here for you, you know.” Dean shook his head slowly from side to side. “This is a tech matter, not one for the nature boys.”
Nature boys—the old scoffing term that underlined the split between the two branches of special Service. If Dean already had such hostility to build upon and was mentally unbalanced—Hosteen put away that small fear. At least the tech was talking, and that slowed any drastic action.
“We had no orders about you either,” he stated. If Dean thought this was a service affair, so much the better. And how did the tech hold him prisoner? Was the device controlling the stass field in that sphere the other nursed so close to his chest? If that were so, Hosteen had a better chance than if his invisible bonds were manipulated by some machine back in the mountain.
Dean shrugged. “Doesn’t concern me. You’ll have to blast off—this is a tech affair.”
His attitude was casual, far too casual. Hosteen smelled and tasted danger as he had a few times before in his life:
“Can’t very well blast off while you have me in stass, can I?”
The other smiled, the stretch of facial muscles pulling the pattern lines on his cheeks into grotesque squares and angles.
“Stass—the nature boys can’t fight stass!” His laugh was almost a giggle. Then he was entirely sober. “You thought you could trick me,” he said dispassionately. “I know the war’s over; I know you aren’t here under orders. No—you’re trying to orbit in on my landing pattern! I’ve life—life itself—right here.” He loosed his hold on the orb with one hand and flung palm out in a florid gesture. “Everything a tech could want! And it’s mine—to have forever.” He giggled again, and that sound following the coolness of his words was an erratic break to frighten a man who had witnessed many crack-ups at Rehab.
“Forever!” Dean repeated. “That’s it—why, you’re trying to planet in! You want it, too! Live forever with every power in your hand when you reach for it.” The fingers of his outheld hand curled up to form a cup. “Only a tech got here first, and the tech knows what to do and how to do it. You’re not the first to try to take over—but you’re easy. I know just how to deal with your kind.” He fingered the sphere, and Hosteen choked as the stass field squeezed in upon his throat.
“I could crush you flat, nature boy, just as flat as an insect under a boot sole. Only—that would be a stupid waste. My friends below—they like amusement. They’ll have you to play with.”
The stranger touched a circlet fitting in a tight band, about his throat. Then he called aloud, and his shout was the twittering whistle of a Norbie.
Hosteen watched the tunnel entrance behind Dean. “Now!” He thought that order.
A flash of yellow out of the dark and the full force of Surra’s weight struck true on Dean’s shoulders. His whistle ended in a shriek as he fell. The stass sphere rolled out of his hand, but before the now free Hosteen could seize it, it hit against a rock and bowled over the rim of the ledge to vanish below.
“Do not kill!” Hosteen gave his command as man and cat rolled back and forth across the stone. He moved in on the melee, his limbs stiff, numb, almost as numb as his hand had been after his experience with the alien door lock.
Surra spat, squalled, broke her hold, pawing at her eyes. Dean, yammering still in the Norbie voice, made another throwing motion, and the cat retreated. He looked up at Hosteen, and his face was a devil’s mask of open, insane rage. With a last cry he headed for the tunnel as Hosteen tackled him. The Amerindian’s cramped limbs brought him down too short; his fingers closed about a leg, but with a vicious kick Dean freed himself and vanished into the passage, the pound of his boots sounding back as he ran.
Surra was still pawing at her eyes. Hosteen grasped a handful of loose hair and skin on her shoulders and pulled her to him. The Norbies Dean had summoned could not be far away. There
was only one retreat from this ledge—back into the mountain after Dean. He hoped that some taboo would keep the natives from nosing after.
A head crowned with black horns rose into sight. The Norbie attacked in a scuttling rush, knife in hand. Then Hosteen was fighting for his life just within the passage entrance. He forced heavy feet and hands into the tricks of unarmed combat that had been a part of his Commando training, rolling farther into the dark, his opponent following.
Pain scored a hot slash along Hosteen’s side as the heart thrust the other had aimed missed. He pulled loose and brought down his hand on the native’s neck just above the collar bone. As the Norbie fell back with a choking gasp, Hosteen pried the knift hilt out of his hand.
There was a whir in the air, and an arrow cut the frawn fabric of the torn shirt at the Terran’s shoulder. On his hands and knees, Hosteen scrambled back, hearing Surra’s whining complaint as she went ahead. There was more than one archer taking aim now into the tunnel. He could see the arcs of their bows against the daylight. But the odd dark that blanketed the Sealed Cave workings was his protection. Keeping low, he escaped the arrows flying overhead, and none of the natives ventured in—he had been right about the taboo.
When he judged that a turn in the passage cloaked him from feathered death, Hosteen paused, snapped on his torch, and called Surra to him. What Dean had done to the cat Hosteen did not know. Her eyes were watering and she was in distress, but Hosteen’s simple tests confirmed the fact that her sight was not affected and that she was already beginning to recover.
But Surra’s ire was fully aroused, and she was determined to trail Dean—which agreed with Hosteen’s desire. He wanted to catch up with the renegade tech. And with a knife now in his belt sheath and a better understanding of the man he hunted, the odds were no longer all in the other’s favor, though reason told the Terran that a length of metal, well wrought and deadly as it was, was no defense against the bag of tricks the tech might have ready.
The dune cat padded on with confidence. She knew where she was going. Only that did not last. In a stretch of tunnel where there was no break in the wall, Surra stopped short, then circled slowly about, sniffing at the flooring, before, completely baffled, she vented her disappointment in a squall such as she would give upon missing an easy kill.
Hosteen beamed the torch at the floor, more than half expecting to see one of the spiral and dot inlays there. But there was no such path here, no band of bulbs on the wall to open one of those weird other-dimension doors. This was simply another secret of the passages that Dean knew—to the bafflement of his enemies.
Could the tech come and go from any part of the caverns at his will? Or were there “stations” from which one could make such journeys? Hosteen wished now that he had investigated more closely the place into which he had dropped when he had used Dean’s door on the platform.
There was nothing to do now but wander through the passages in hope of finding such a door or return to the surface, where he did not doubt he would find the Norbies waiting. How had Surra come into the mountain—by another tunnel?
The Terran squatted down and called the cat to him. With his hand on her head, he strove to have her recall her entrance into the passages.
Those very attributes that made her so effectively a part of the team worked against him now. Surra had been thoroughly aroused by Dean’s counter to her attack. She had put out of mind everything but her desire to run him down. And now she was interested only in that and not in what seemed to her to be meaningless inquiries about the passages. The patience Hosteen had always used in dealing with the team held, in spite of his wish for action.
Dean—free in these burrows to use the knowledge of the installations. And Logan—When Hosteen thought of Logan, it was like the burn of a blaster ray across his flesh. The one small hope the Terran clung to was the tube on the board that had lighted. Even if Logan had not arrived in the big hall, he might have escaped the death of the Dry day and be wandering elsewhere in this maze.
“Baku—Gorgol.” Since Surra would not respond to Hosteen’s first questions, he tried a more oblique approach. And now her concentration on Dean was shaken.
“High—up.” As always the answers were not clear. Human mind groped to find a better touch with feline.
“Up—where?” the Beast Master urged.
There was a moment of withdrawal. Was Surra refusing, as she could do upon occasion? Then the cat’s head moved under Hosteen’s hand, and her muzzle raised as if drawing from the air some message he could not hope to read.
“That one is gone for now—but we shall hunt him,” Hosteen promised. “But to so hunt, the team is needed. Where is Baku?”
That had made the right impression. Too long they had been tied together; they both needed the security of that relationship.
Surra made no answer but pulled out of his touch and started down the passage with some of the same determination she had displayed in the trailing of Dean.
No man could ever have traced his way through the labyrinth where Surra now played guide. They went from passage to passage, bypassed caves and chambers where evidence of the aliens was present in installations, fittings, and objects whose purpose Hosteen could not grasp in a glance or two and which interested Surra not at all. However, the cat appeared to know just where she was going and why.
Their way had led down and up again so many times that Hosteen was bewildered, though he came to believe that they were no longer under the same mountain. Finally, Surra cut out on one of the worked tunnels where the walls were black coated and came into a cleft of bare, untooled rock. Here man had to take cat’s path on his hands and knees.
There was a last narrow crevice through which Hosteen crawled to light, air, and the fresh scent of growing things—a small valley into which the Big Dry had not ventured any more than it did into that of the native village. Hosteen sat down wearily to look about.
Now that he had a chance to study the vegetation, he saw a difference. This was a green-green world—not yellow-green, nor red-green, nor brown-green—as the vegetation of Arzor was elsewhere. And where had he ever seen foliage such as that of a small bush a hand’s distance away?
A thunderbolt swooped down on black wings from the sky! Baku settled on the ground and came toward the Beast Master, her wings half spread, uttering a series of piercing cries. And the warmth of her greeting was part of their belonging.
But when her clamor was echoed by a sharp whistle from the bushes, Hosteen tensed, his hand going to his knife. That Norbie signal had come to mean danger.
Surra stretched out in a patch of open sunlight, blinking her eyes, giving no alarm. As Hosteen got to his feet, Gorgol came into the open. The young Norbie showed some damage. A poultice of crushed leaves was tied in a netting of grass stems about his left forearm, and there was a purple bruise mottling that side of his face, swelling the flesh until he could see only through a slit of eye. The threads knotting his yoris-tooth breastplate together had broken, and a section was missing.
“Storm!” he signed, and then put out his hand, drawing finger tips lightly down the Terran’s arm as if he needed the assurance of touch to accept the other’s appearance.
Baku had taken to the air, then settled down again on Hosteen’s shoulder. And he braced himself under her weight as she dipped her head to put that beak, which could be such a lethal weapon, against his cheek in quick caress.
“Where are we?” Hosteen glanced at the mountain crests reared to the sky about the pocket of earth that held them. He did not recognize any of them, could not have told in which direction their tunnel wandering had brought them.
“In the mountains,” Gorgol signed, an explanation that did not explain at all. “We ran far before the fires.”
“We?”
Gorgol turned his head and pursed his lips for another whistle. For a moment Hosteen hoped Logan had found his way here too. But the man coming out of a screen of lacy fronds was a stranger.
&nb
sp; Rags of green uniform still slung to a lath-thin body, a body displaying dark bruises such as Gorgol bore. Only it was a human body, and there were no horns, only a mop of brown hair on the head.
“So—Zolti was right,” the stranger said in a voice that shook a little. “There was help here all along—we could have made it out—home.”
Then he was on the ground as if his long legs had folded bone-lessly under him, his face buried in his scratched and earth-streaked hands, his sharp shoulder blades shaking with harsh, tearing sobs he could not control.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
W
ho is this one?” Hosteen asked Gorgol.
“I do not know, for he has not the finger talk,” the native signed in return. “We came together on the mountain, and he led me on a path through the flames. I think that he is one who has run in fear for long and long, and yet still will fight—truly a warrior.”
Hosteen signaled with a twitch of shoulder, and Baku took off for a perch on a nearby rock. The Terran sat down beside the stranger and laid his hand gently on the bowed back.
“Who are you, friend?” He used the Galactic basic of the Service, but he was not greatly surprised when broken words came in Terran.
“Najar, Mikki Najar, Reconnaissance scout—500th Landing force.”
His voice had steadied. Now he dropped his hands and turned his head to face Hosteen directly, a puzzled expression on his features as he continued to study the Amerindian.
“Hosteen Storm, Beast Master,” Hosteen identified himself and then added, “The war is over, you know.”
Najar nodded slowly. “I know. But this is a holdout planet, isn’t it? That’s why you’re here—or is that wrong, too?”