5
Moisture from the night's rain hung on the tree leaves, clung inglobules to Rynch's sweating body. He lay on a wide branch trying tocontrol the heavy panting which supplied his laboring lungs. And hecould still hear the echoes of the startled cries which had come fromthe men who had threaded through the woods to the up-pointed tail finsof the L-B.
Now he tried to reason why he had run. They were his own kind, theywould take him out of the loneliness of a world heretofore empty ofhis species. But that tall man--the one who had led the party into theirregular clearing about the life boat--
Rynch shivered, dug his nails into the wood on which he lay. At thesight of that man, dream and reality had crashed together, sending himinto panic-stricken flight. That was the man from the room--the manwith the cup!
As his heart quieted he began to think more coherently. First, he hadnot been able to find the strong-jaws's den. Then the marks on theground at the point from which he had fallen and the L-B were here,just as he remembered. But not far from the small ship he haddiscovered something more--a campsite with a shelter fashioned out ofspalls and vines, containing possessions a castaway might haveaccumulated.
That man would come, Rynch was sure of that, but he was too spent tostruggle on.
No, the answer to every part of the puzzle lay with that man. To goback to the ship clearing was to risk capture--but he had to know.Rynch looked with more attention at his present surroundings. Deepmold under the trees here would hold tracks. There might just beanother way to move. He eyed the spread of limbs on a neighbor tree.
His journey through those heights was awkward and he sweated andcringed when he disturbed vocal treetop dwellers. He was also todiscover that close to the site of the L-B crash others waited.
He huddled against the bole of a tree when he made out the curve of around bulk holding tight to the tree trunk aloft. Though it was balledin upon itself he was sure the creature was fully as large as he, andthe menacing claws suggested it was a formidable opponent.
When it made no move to follow him Rynch began to hope it had onlybeen defending its own hiding place, for its present attitudesuggested concealment.
Still facing that featureless blob in the tree, the man retreated,alert for the first sign of advance on the part of the creature above.None came, and he dared to slip around the bole of the tree underwhich he stood, listening intently for any corresponding movementoverhead. Now he was facing that survivor's camp.
Another object crouched in the dark of the lean-to shelter, just asits fellow was on sentry duty in the tree! Only this one did not havethe self-color of the foliage to disguise it. Four-limbed, its longforearms curved about its bent knees, its general outline almost thatof a human--if a human went clothed in a thick fuzz. The head hunchedright against the shoulders as if the neck were very short, or totallylacking, was pear-shaped, with the longer end to the back, and thesense organs of eyes and nose squeezed together on the lower quarterof the rounded portion, with a line of wide mouth to split the bluntround of the muzzle. Dark pits for eyes showed no pupil, iris, orcornea. The nose was a black, perfectly rounded tube jutting an inchor so beyond the cheek surface. Grotesque, alien and terrifying, itmade no hostile move. And, since it had not turned its head, he couldnot be sure it had even sighted him. But it knew he was there, he wascertain of that. And was waiting--for what? As the long secondscrawled by Rynch began to believe that it was not waiting for him.Heartened, he pulled at the vine loop, climbed back into the tree.
Minutes later he discovered that there were more than two of thebeasts waiting quietly about the camp, and that their sentry line ranbetween him and the clearing of the L-B. He withdrew farther into thewood, intent upon finding a detour which would bring him out into theopen lands. Now he wanted to join forces with his own kind, whetherthose men were potential enemies or not.
As time passed the beasts closed about the clearing of the camp.Afternoon was fading into evening when he reached a point severalmiles downstream near the river. Since he had come into the open hehad not sighted any of the watchers. He hoped they did not willinglyventure out of the trees where the leaves were their protection.
Rynch went flat on the stream bank, made a worm's progress up theslope to crouch behind a bush and survey the land immediately ahead.There stood an off-world spacer, fins down, nose skyward, and groupednot too far from its landing ramp, a collection of bubble tents. Afire burned in their midst and men were moving about it.
Now that he was free from the wood and its watchers and had come sonear to his goal, Rynch was curiously reluctant to do the sensiblething, to rise out of concealment and walk up to that fire, to claimrescue by his own kind.
The man he sought stood by the fire, shrugging his arms into a webbingharness which brought a box against his chest. Having made that fasthe picked up a needler by its sling. By their gestures the others werearguing with him, but he shook his head, came on, to be a shadowstalking among other shadows. One of the men trailed him, but as theyreached a post planted a little beyond the bubble tents he stopped,allowed the explorer to advance alone into the dark.
Rynch went to cover under a bush. The man was heading to the streambed. Had they somehow learned of his own presence nearby, were theyout to find him? But the preparations the tall man had made seemedmore suited to going on patrol. The watchers! Was the other out to spyon them? That idea made sense. And in the meantime he would let theother past him, follow along behind until he was far enough from thecamp so that his friends could not interfere--then, they would have ameeting!
Rynch's fingers balled into fists. He would find out what was real,what was a dream in this crazy, mixed up mind of his! That other wouldknow, and would tell him the truth!
Alert as he was, he lost sight of the stranger who melted into thedusky cover of the shadows. Then came a quiet ripple of water close tohis own hiding place. The man from the spacer camp was using thestream as his road.
In spite of his caution Rynch was close to betrayal as he edged arounda clump of vegetation growing half in, half out of the stream. Only atimely rustle told him that the other had sat down on a drift log.
Waiting for him? Rynch froze, so startled that he could not thinkclearly for a second. Then he noted that the outline of the other'sbody was visible, growing brighter by the moment.
Minute particles of pale-greenish radiance were gathering about theother. The dark shadow of an arm flapped, the radiance swirled, brokeagain into pinpoint sparks.
Rynch glanced down at his own body--the same sparks were drifting inabout him, edging his arms, thighs, chest. He pushed back into thebushes while the sparks still flitted, but they no longer gathered instrength enough to light his presence. Now he could see they driftedabout the vegetation, about the log where the man sat, about rocks andreeds. Only they were thicker about the stranger as if his body were amagnet. He continued to keep them whirling by means of waving hand andarm, but there was enough light to show Rynch the fingers of his otherhand, busy on the front panel of the box he wore.
That fingering stopped, then Rynch's head came up as he heard a veryfaint sound. Not a beast's cry--or was it?
Again those fingers moved on the panel. Was the other sending amessage by that means? Rynch watched him check the webbing, count theequipment at his belt, settle the needler in the crook of his arm.Then the stranger left the stream, headed towards the woods.
Rynch jumped to his feet, a cry of warning shaping, but not to beuttered. He padded after the other. There was plenty of time to stopthe man before he reached the danger which might lurk under the trees.
However the other was as wary of that dark as if he suspected whatmight lie in wait there. He angled along northward, avoiding clumps ofscattered brush, keeping in the open where Rynch dared not tail himtoo closely.
Their course, parallel to the woods, brought them at last to a secondstream, the size of a river, into which the first creek emptied. Herethe other settled down between two rocks with every indication of
remaining there for a period.
Thankfully Rynch found his own lurking place from which he could keepthe other in sight. The light points gathered, hung in a smallluminous cloud over the rocks. But Rynch had prudently withdrawn undera bush, and the scent of its aromatic leaves must have discouraged thesparks, for no such crown came to his sentry post.
Drugged with fatigue, the younger man slept, awaking to full day, afog of bewilderment and disorientation. To open his eyes to thisblue-green pocket instead of to four dirty walls, was wrong.
Remembering, he started up and slunk down the slope, angry at hisfailure. He found the other's track, not turning back as he had halffeared, cleanly printed on level spots of wet earth--eastward now.What was the purpose of the other's expedition? Was he going to usethe open cut through which the river ran as a way of penetrating thewooded country?
Now Rynch considered the problem from his own angle. The man from thespacer had made no effort to conceal his trail, in fact it wouldalmost seem that he had deliberately gone out of his way to leave bootprints on favorable stretches of ground. Did he guess that Rynchlurked behind, was now leading him on for some purpose of his own? Orwere those traces left to guide another party from the camp?
To advance openly up the stream bed was to invite discovery. Rynchsurveyed the nearer bank. Clumps of small trees and high growingbushes dotted that expanse, an ideal cover.
He was hardly out of sight of the bush which had sheltered him when heheard the coughing roar of a water-cat. And the feline was attackingan enemy, enraged to the pitch of vocal frenzy. Rynch ran a zigzagcourse from one clump of bush to the next. That sound of snarling,spitting hate ended in mid-cry as Rynch crawled to the river bank.
The man from the spacer camp had been the focus of a three-prongattack from a female and her cubs. Three red bodies were flat andstill on the gravel as the off-worlder leaned back against a rockbreathing heavily. As Rynch sighted him, he stooped to recover theneedler he had dropped, lurched away from the rock towards the water,and so blundered straight into another Jumalan trap.
His unsteady foot advancing for another step came down on a slipperysurface, and he fell forward as his legs were engulfed in the trapburrow of a strong-jaws. With a startled cry the man dropped theneedler again, clawed at the ground about him. Already he was buriedto his knees, then his mid-thighs, in the artificial quicksand. But hehad not lost his head and was jerking from side to side in an effortto pull free.
Rynch got to his feet, walked with slow deliberation down to theriver's brink. The trapped prisoner had shied halfway around,stretching out his arms to find a firmer grip on some rock large andheavy enough to anchor him. After his first startled cry he had madeno sound, but now, as he sighted Rynch, his eyes widened and his lipsparted.
The box on his chest caught on a stone he had dragged to him in adesperate try for support. There was a spitting of sparks and thestranger worked frantically at the buckle of the webbing harness toloosen it and toss the whole thing from him. The box struck one of thedead water-cats, flashed as fur and flesh were singed.
Rynch watched dispassionately before he caught the needler, jerking itaway from the prisoner. The man eyed him steadily, and his expressiondid not alter even when Rynch swung the off-world weapon to center itssights on the late owner.
"Suppose," Rynch's voice was rusty sounding in his own ears, "we talknow."
The man nodded. "As you wish, Brodie."