7
It was some time before Hume found what he wanted, an islet inmidstream lacking any growth and rising to a rough pinnacle. The sideswere seamed with crevices and caves which promised protection forone's back in any desperate struggle. And they had discovered it nonetoo soon, for the late afternoon shadows were lengthening.
There had been no attack, just the trailing to herd the men to thenortheast. And Rynch had lost the first tight pinch of panic, thoughhe knew the folly of underestimating the unknown.
They climbed with unspoken consent, going clear to the top, where theyhuddled together on a four-foot tableland. Hume unhooked his distancelenses, but it was toward the rises of the mountains that he aimedthem, not along the back trail.
Rynch wriggled about, studied the river and its banks. The beaststhere were quiet, blue-green lumps, standing down on the river bank orsquatting in the grass.
"Nothing." Hume lowered the lenses, held them before his broad chestas he still watched the peaks.
"What did you expect?" Rynch snapped. He was hungry, but not hungryenough to abandon the islet.
Hume laughed shortly. "I don't know. Only I'm sure they are heading usin that direction."
"Look here," Rynch rounded on him. "You know this planet, you've beenhere before."
"I was one of the survey team that approved it for the Guild."
"Then you must have combed it pretty thoroughly. How is it that youdidn't know about them?" He gestured to their pursuers.
"That is what I would like to ask a few assorted experts right aboutnow," Hume returned. "The verifiers registered no intelligent nativelife here."
"No native life." Rynch chewed that over, came up with the obviousexplanation. "All right--so then maybe our blue-backed friends areimported. Suppose someone's running a private business of his own hereand wants to get rid of visitors?"
Hume looked thoughtful. "No." He did not enlarge upon his negative.Sitting down he pulled a cylinder container from a belt loop and shookout four tablets, handing two to Rynch, mouthing the others.
"Vita-blocks--good for twenty-four hours sustenance."
The iron rations depended upon by all exploring services did not havethe satisfying taste of real food. However Rynch swallowed themdutifully before he descended with Hume to river level. The Huntersplashed water from the stream into a depression in the rock anddropped a pinch of clarifying powder into it.
"With the dark," he announced, "we might be able to get through theirlines."
"You believe that?"
Hume laughed. "No--but one doesn't overlook the factor of sheer luck.Also, I don't care to finish up at the place they may have chosen forus." He tilted his chin to study the sky. "We'll take watches and restin turn. No use trying anything until it is dark--unless they start tomove in. You take the first one?"
As Rynch nodded, Hume edged back into a crevice as a shelled creaturewithdrawing to natural protection, going to sleep as easily as if hecould control that state by will. Rynch, watching him curiously for asecond or two before climbing up to a position from which he judged hecould see all sides of their refuge, determined not to be surprised.
The watchers were crouched down, waiting with that patience which hadimpressed him from his first sight of the camp sentries back in theforest. There was no movement, no sound. They were simply there--onguard. And Rynch did not believe that the darkness of night wouldbring any relaxation of that vigilance.
He leaned back, feeling the grit of the rocky surface against his bareback and shoulders. Under his hand was the most efficient andformidable weapon known to the frontier worlds, from this post hecould keep the enemy under surveillance and think.
Hume had had him planted here, in the first place, provided with thememory of Rynch Brodie--the reward for him was to be a billioncredits. Too much staff work had gone into his conditioning for just asmall stake.
So Rynch Brodie was on Jumala, and Hume had come with witnesses tofind him. Another part of his mind stood aloof now, applauding theclearness of his reasoning. Rynch Brodie was to be discovered acastaway on Jumala. Only, matters had not worked out according toHume's plan. In the first place he was certain he had not beenintended to know that he was not Rynch Brodie. For a fleeting secondhe wondered why that conditioning had not completely worked, then wentback to the problem of his relationship with Hume.
No, the Out-Hunter had expected a castaway who would be just what heordered. Then this affair of the watchers--creatures the Guild men hadnot found here a few months ago--Rynch felt a small cold chill alonghis spine. Hume's game was one thing, something he could understand,but the silent beasts were another and somehow far more disturbingthreat.
Rynch edged forward, watching the mist on the water, his brainstriving to solve this other puzzle as neatly as he thought he haddiscovered the reason for his scrambled memories and his being onJumala.
The mist was an added danger. Thick enough and those watchers couldmove in under its curtain. A needler was efficient, yes, but it couldwipe out only an enemy at which it was aimed. Blind cross sweepingwith its darts would only exhaust the clip without results, save bylucky chance.
On the other hand, suppose they could turn that same gray haze totheir own advantage--use it to blanket their withdrawal? He was aboutto go to Hume with that suggestion when he sighted the new move intheir odd battle with the aliens.
A wink of light--two more--blinking, following the erratic course bythe pull of the stream. All bobbing along toward the rugged coastlineof the islet. Those had appeared out of nothingness as suddenly as theglobes when this chase had begun.
The globes and the winking lights on the water connected in his mind,argued new danger. Rynch took careful aim, fired a dart at one whichhad grounded on the pointed tip of the rocks where the river currentcame together after its division about the island. For the first timeRynch realized those things below were moving _against_ thecurrent--they had come upstream as if propelled.
He had fired and the light was still there, two more coming in behindit, so that now there was an irregular cluster of them. And there wasactivity on the water-washed rocks before them. Just as the scavengershad moved ahead of the globes on land, so now aquatic creatures hadcome out of the river, were flopping higher on the islet. And thoselights were changing color--from white to reddish-yellow.
Rynch scrabbled with one hand in a rock crevice, found a stone he hadnoted earlier. He hurled that at the cluster of lights. There was apuff of brilliant red, one was gone. Something flopping on the rocksgave a mewling cry and somersaulted back into the water. Then a fingerof mist drew between Rynch and the lights which were now only faint,glowing patches. He swung down from his perch, shook Hume awake.
The Out-Hunter made that instant return to full consciousness whichwas another defense for the men who live long on the rim of wildworlds.
"What--?"
Rynch pulled him forward. The mist had thickened, but there were moreof those ominous lights at water level, spreading down both sides ofthe point, forming a wall. Dark forms moved out of the water ahead ofthem, flopping on the rocks, pressing higher, towards the ledge wherethe men stood.
"Those globes--I think they're moving in the river now." Rynch foundanother stone, took careful aim, and smashed a second one. "Theneedler has no effect on them," he reported. "Stones do--but I don'tknow why."
They searched about them in the crevices for more ammunition, layingup a line of fist-sized rocks, while the lights gathered in, spreadingfarther and farther down the shores of the islet. Hume cried outsuddenly, and aimed his ray tube below. The lance of its blast cut thedark as might a bolt of lightning.
With a shrill squeal, a blot shadow detached from the slopeimmediately below them. A vile, musky scent, now mingled with thestench of burning flesh, set them coughing.
"Water spider!" Hume identified. "If they are driving those out and upat...."
He fumbled at his equipment belt and then tossed an object downward todisintegrate in a shower of fier
y sparks. Wherever those sparkstouched rock or ground they flared up in tall thin columns of fire,lighting up the nightmare on the rocks and up the ledges.
Rynch fired the needler, Hume's ray tube flashed and flashed again.Things squealed, or grunted, or died silently, while clawing to reachthe upper ledges. He could not be sure of the nature of some of thosethings. One, armed and clawed as the scavengers, was nearly as largeas a water-cat. And a furry, man-legged creature, with a double-jawedhead, bore also a ring of phosphorescent eyes set in a complete circleabout its skull. They were alien life routed out of the water.
"The lights--smash the lights!" Hume ordered.
Rynch understood. The lights had driven these attackers out of theriver. Put out the lights and the boiling broth of water dwellersmight conceivably return to their homes. He dropped the needler, tookup stones and set about the business of finishing off as many of thelights as he could.
Hume fired into the crawling mass, pausing only once to send anotherof those flame bombs crashing to illuminate the scene. The watercreatures bewildered, clumsy out of their element, were so far at hismercy. But their numbers, in spite of the piling dead, were still adangerous threat.
Rynch tore gapping holes in that line of lights. But he could see,through the mist, more floating sparks, gathering to take theirplaces, perhaps herding before them more water things to attack.Except for those few gaps he had wrought, the islet was now completelyenveloped.
"Ahhhh--" Hume's voice arose in a roar of anger and defiance. Hestabbed his ray down at a spot just below their ledge. A hugesegmented, taloned leg kicked, caught on the edge of the stone at thelevel of their feet, twisted aloft again and was gone.
"Up!" Hume ordered. "To the top!"
Rynch caught up two handsful of stones, holding them to his chest withhis left arm as he made a last cast to see one light puff out inanswer. Then they both scrambled on to that small platform at the topof the islet. By the aid of the burning flame-torches the Hunter hadset, they could see that most of the rocky slopes below them nowsquirmed with a horrible mass of water life.
Where Hume had fired his ray there was fierce activity, as the livingfeasted on the slain and quarreled over the bounty. But from otherquarters the crawling advance pressed on.
"I have only one more flame flare," Hume stated.
One more flare--then they would be in the dark with the mist hidingthe forward-moving enemy.
"I wonder if they are watching out there?" Rynch scowled into thedark.
"They--or what sent them. They know what they are doing."
"You mean they must have done this before?"
"I think so. That L-B back there--it made a good landing, and thereare supplies missing from its lockers."
"Which you removed--" Rynch countered.
"No. There might have been real castaways landed here. Not that wefound any trace of them. Now I can guess why--"
"But you Guild men were here, and you didn't run into this!"
"I know." Hume sounded baffled. "Not a sign then."
Rynch threw the last of his stones, heard it clink harmlessly againsta rock. Hume balanced an object on the palm of his hand.
"Last flare!"
"What's that? Over there?"
Rynch had sighted the flashing out of the dark from the river bank,making a pattern of flickers which bore no relation to the infernallights at the water's edge.
Hume's ray tube pointed skyward as he answered with a series of shortbursts.
"Take cover!" The call came weirdly out over the water, the tonedehumanized. Hume cupped his mouth with one hand, shouted back:
"We're on top--no cover."
"Then flatten down--we're blasting!"
They flattened, lay almost in each other's arms, curled on that narrowspace. Even through his closed eyelids Rynch caught the flash ofvivid, man-made lightning crashing first on one side of the islet andthen on the other, and sweeping every crawling horror out of life,into odorous ash. The backlash of that blast must have caught themajority of the lights also. For when Rynch and Hume cautiously satup, they saw only a handful of widely scattered and dulling globesbelow.
They choked, coughed, rubbed watering eyes as the fumes from thescorched rocks wreathed up about their perch.
"Flitter with life line--above you!"
That voice had come out of what should have been empty air over theirheads. A gangling line trailed across their bodies, a line with asafety belt locked to it, and a second was uncoiling in a slow loop asthey watched.
In unison they grabbed for those means of escape, buckled the beltsabout them.
"Haul away!" Hume called. The lines tightened, their bodies swung upclear of the blasted river island, as their unseen transport headedfor the eastern shore.