2. DEATH OF A SHIP
That sigh of displaced air was not as loud as a breeze, but it echoedmonstrously in Shann's ears. He could not believe in his luck as thatsound grew fainter, drew away into the valley he had just left. Withinfinite caution he raised his head from his arm, still hardly able toaccept the fact that he had not been sighted, that the Throgs and theirflyer were gone.
But that black plate was spinning out into the sun haze. One of thebeetles might have suspected that there were Terran fugitives andordered a routine patrol. After all, how could the aliens know that theyhad caught all but one of the Survey party in camp? Though with all theTerran scout flitters grounded on the field, the men dead in theirbunks, the surprise would seem to be complete.
As Shann moved, Taggi and Togi came to life also. They had gone to earthwith speed, and the man was sure that both beasts had sensed danger. Notfor the first time he knew a burning desire for the formal education hehad never had. In camp he had listened, dragging out routine jobs inorder to overhear reports and the small talk of specialists keen ontheir own particular hobbies. But so much of the information Shann hadthus picked up to store in a retentive memory he had not understood andcould not fit together. It had been as if he were trying to solve somehighly important puzzle with at least a quarter of the necessary piecesmissing, or with unrelated bits from others intermixed. How much controldid a trained animal scout have over his furred or featheredassistants? And was part of that mastery a mental rapport built upbetween man and animal?
How well would the wolverines obey him now, especially when they wouldnot return to camp where cages stood waiting as symbols of humanauthority? Wouldn't a trek into the wilderness bring about a revolt forcomplete freedom? If Shann could depend upon the animals, it would meana great deal. Not only would their superior hunting ability provide allthree with food, but their scouting senses, so much keener than his,might erect a slender wall between life and death.
Few large native beasts had been discovered on Warlock by the Terranexplorers. And of those four or five different species, none had provedhostile if unprovoked. But that did not mean that somewhere back in thewild lands into which Shann was heading there were no heretoforeunknowns, perhaps slyer and as vicious as the wolverines when they werearoused to rage.
Then there were the "dreams," which had afforded the prime source ofcamp discussion and dispute. Shann brushed coarse sand from his bootsand thought about the dreams. Did they or did they not exist? You couldstart an argument any time by making a definite statement for or againstthe peculiar sort of dreaming reported by the first scout to set ship onthis world.
The Circe system, of which Warlock was the second of three planets, hadfirst been scouted four years ago by one of those explorers travelingsolo in Survey service. Everyone knew that the First-In Scouts were aweird breed, almost a mutation of Terran stock--their reports were rifewith strange observations.
So an alarming one concerning Circe (a yellow sun such as Sol) and herthree planets was not so rare. Witch, the world nearest in orbit toCirce, was too hot for human occupancy without drastic and too costlyworld-changing. Wizard, the third out from the sun, was mostly bare rockand highly poisonous water. But Warlock, swinging through space betweentwo forbidding neighbors, seemed to be just what the settlement boardordered.
Then the Survey scout, even in the cocoon safety of his well-armed ship,began to dream. And from those dreams a horror of the apparently emptyworld developed, until he fled the planet to preserve his sanity. Therehad been a second visit to Warlock in check; worlds so well adapted tohuman emigration could not be lightly thrown away. And this time therewas a negative report, no trace of dreams, no registration of anyoutside influence on the delicate and complicated equipment the shipcarried. So the Survey team had been dispatched to prepare for thecoming of the first pioneers, and none of them had dreamed either--atleast, no more than the ordinary dreams all men accepted.
Only there were those who pointed out that the seasons had changedbetween the first and second visits to Warlock. That first scout hadplaneted in summer; his successors had come in fall and winter. Theyargued that the final release of the world for settlement should not begiven until the full year on Warlock had been sampled.
But the pressure of Emigrant Control had forced their hands, that andthe fear of just what had eventually happened--an attack from theThrogs. So they had speeded up the process of declaring Warlock open.Only Ragnar Thorvald had protested that decision up to the last and hadgone back to headquarters on the supply ship a month ago to make a lastappeal for a more careful study.
Shann stopped brushing the sand from the tough fabric above his knee.Ragnar Thorvald ... He remembered back to the port landing apron onanother world, remembered with a sense of loss he could not define. Thathad been about the second biggest day of his short life; the biggest hadcome earlier when they had actually allowed him to sign on for Surveyduty.
He had tumbled off the cross-continent cargo carrier, his kit--a verymeager kit--slung over his thin shoulder, a hot eagerness expandinginside him until he thought that he could not continue to throttle downthat wild happiness. There was a waiting starship. And he--Shann Lanteefrom the Dumps of Tyr, without any influence or schooling--was going toblast off in her, wearing the brown-green uniform of Survey!
Then he had hesitated uncertainly, had not quite dared cross the fewfeet of apron lying between him and that compact group wearing the sameuniform--with a slight difference, that of service bars and completionbadges and rank insignia--with the unconscious self-assurance of men whohad done this many times before.
But after a moment that whole group had become in his own shy appraisaljust a background for one man. Shann had never before known in hispinched and limited childhood, his lost boyhood, anyone who aroused inhim hero worship. And he could not have put a name to the new emotionthat added so suddenly to his burning desire to make good, not only tohold the small niche in Survey which he had already so painfullyachieved, but to climb, until he could stand so in such a group talkingeasily to that tall man, his uncovered head bronze-yellow in thesunlight, his cool gray eyes pale in his brown face.
Not that any of those wild dreams born in that minute or two had beenrealized in the ensuing months. Probably those dreams had always been aswild as the ones reported by the first scout on Warlock. Shann grinnedwryly now at the short period of childish hope and half-confidence thathe could do big things. Only one Thorvald had ever noticed Shann'sexistence in the Survey camp, and that had been Garth.
Garth Thorvald, a far less impressive--one could say "smudged"--copy ofhis brother. Swaggering with an arrogance Ragnar never showed, Garth wasa cadet on his first mission, intent upon making Shann realize theunbridgeable gulf between a labor hand and an officer-to-be. He hadappeared to know right from their first meeting just how to make Shann'slife a misery.
Now, in this slit of valley well away from the domes, Shann's fistsballed. He pounded them against the earth in a way he had so often hopedto plant them on Garth's smoothly handsome face, his well-muscled body.One didn't survive the Dumps of Tyr without learning how to use fists,and boots, and a list of tricks they didn't teach in any academy. He hadalways been sure that he could take Garth if they mixed it up. But if hehad loosed the tight rein he had kept on his temper and offered thatchallenge, he would have lost his chance with Survey. Garth had provedhimself able to talk his way out of any scrape, even minor derelictionsof duty, and he far out-ranked Shann. The laborer from Tyr had had toswallow all that the other could dish out and hope that on his nextassignment he would not be a member of young Thorvald's team. Though,because of Garth Thorvald, Shann's toll of black record marks hadmounted dangerously high and each day the chance for any more duty tourshad grown dimmer.
Shann laughed, and the sound was ugly. That was one thing he didn't haveto worry about any longer. There would be no other assignments for him,the Throgs had seen to that. And Garth ... well, there would never be ashowdown between them now. He sto
od up. The Throg ship had disappeared;they could push on.
He found a break in the cliff wall which was climbable, and he coaxedthe wolverines after him. When they stood on the heights from which thefalls tumbled, Taggi and Togi rubbed against him, cried for hisattention. They, too, appeared to need the reassurance they got fromcontact with him, for they were also fugitives on this alien world, theonly representatives of their kind.
Since he did not have any definite goal in view, Shann continued to beguided by the stream, following its wanderings across a plateau. The sunwas warm, so he carried his jacket slung across one shoulder. Taggi andTogi ranged ahead, twice catching skitterers, which they devouredvoraciously. A shadow on a sun-baked rock sent the Terran skidding forcover until he saw that it was cast by one of the questing falcons fromthe upper peaks. But that shook his confidence, so he again soughtcover, ashamed at his own carelessness.
In the late afternoon he reached the far end of the plateau, faced aclimb to peaks which still bore cones of snow, now tinted a soft peachby the sun. Shann studied that possible path and distrusted his ownpowers to take it without proper equipment or supplies. He must turneither north or south, though he would then have to abandon a sure watersupply in the stream. Tonight he would camp where he was. He had notrealized how tired he was until he found a likely half-cave in themountain wall and crawled in. There was too much danger in fire here; hewould have to do without that first comfort of his kind.
Luckily, the wolverines squeezed in beside him to fill the hole. Withtheir warm furred bodies sandwiching him, Shann dozed, awoke, and dozedagain, listening to night sounds--the screams, cries, hunting calls, ofthe Warlock wilds. Now and again one of the wolverines whined and moveduneasily.
Fingers of sun picked at Shann through a shaft among the rocks, strikinghis eyes. He moved, blinked blearily awake, unable for the first fewseconds to understand why the smooth plasta wall of his bunk had becomerough red stone. Then he remembered. He was alone and he threw himselffrantically out of the cave, afraid the wolverines had wandered off.Only both animals were busy clawing under a boulder with a steadypersistence which argued there was a purpose behind that effort.
A sharp sting on the back of one hand made that purpose only too clearto Shann, and he retreated hurriedly from the vicinity of theexcavation. They had found an earth-wasp's burrow and were huntinggrubs, naturally arousing the rightful inhabitants to bitter resentment.
Shann faced the problem of his own breakfast. He had had the immunityshots given to all members of the team, and he had eaten game brought inby exploring parties and labeled "safe." But how long he could keep tothe varieties of native food he knew was uncertain. Sooner or later hemust experiment for himself. Already he drank the stream water withoutthe aid of purifiers, and so far there had been no ill results from thatnecessary recklessness. Now the stream suggested fish. But instead hechanced upon another water inhabitant which had crawled up on land forsome obscure purpose of its own. It was a sluggish scaled thing, an easyvictim to his club, with thin, weak legs it could project at will from afinned and armor-plated body.
Shann offered the head and guts to Togi, who had abandoned the waspnest. She sniffed in careful investigation and then gulped. Shann builta small fire and seared the firm greenish flesh. The taste was flat,lacking salt, but the food eased his emptiness. Enheartened, he startedsouth, hoping to find water sometime during the morning.
By noon he had his optimism justified with the discovery of a spring,and the wolverines had brought down a slender-legged animal whose coatwas close in shade to the dusky purple of the vegetation. Smaller than aTerran deer, its head bore, not horns, but a ridge of stiffened hairrising in a point some twelve inches about the skull dome. Shann haggledoff some ragged steaks while the wolverines feasted in earnest,carefully burying the head afterward.
It was when Shann knelt by the spring pool to wash that he caught theclamor of the clak-claks. He had seen or heard nothing of the flyerssince he had left the lake valley. But from the noise now rising in anearsplitting volume, he thought there was a sizable colony near-by andthat the inhabitants were thoroughly aroused.
He crept on his hands and knees to near-by brush cover, heading towardthe source of that outburst. If the claks were announcing a Throgscouting party, he wanted to know it.
Lying flat, with branches forming a screen over him, the Terran gazedout on a stretch of grassland which sloped at a fairly steep angle tothe south and which must lead to a portion of countryside well below thelevel he was now traversing.
The clak-claks were skimming back and forth, shrieking their staccatowar cries. Following the erratic dashes of their flight formation,Shann decided that whatever they railed against was on the lower level,out of his sight from that point. Should he simply withdraw, since thedisturbance was not near him? Prudence dictated that; yet still hehesitated.
He had no desire to travel north, or to try and scale the mountains. No,south was his best path, and he should be very sure that route wasclosed before he retreated.
Since any additional fuss the clak-claks might make on sighting himwould be undistinguished in their now general clamor, the Terran crawledon to where tall grass provided a screen at the top of the slope. Therehe stopped short, his hands digging into the earth in sudden brakingaction.
Below, the ground steamed from a rocket flare-back, grasses burned awayfrom the fins of a small scoutship. But even as Shann rose to one knee,his shout of welcome choked in his throat. One of those fins sank,canting the ship crookedly, preventing any new take-off. And over thecrown of a low hill to the west swung the ominous black plate of a Throgflyer.
The Throg ship came up in a burst of speed, and Shann waited tensely forsome countermove from the scout. Those small speedy Terran ships wereprudently provided with weapons triply deadly in proportion to theirsize. He was sure that the Terran ship could hold its own against theThrog, even eliminate the enemy. But there was no fire from the slantingpencil of the scout. The Throg circled warily, obviously expecting atrap. Twice it darted back in the direction from which it had come. Asit returned from its second retreat, another of its kind showed, a blackcoin dot against the amber of the sky.
Shann felt sick inside. Now the Terran scout had lost any advantage andperhaps all hope. The Throgs could box the other in, cut the downed shipto pieces with their energy beams. He wanted to crawl away and notwitness this last disaster for his kind. But some stubborn core of willkept him where he was.
The Throgs began to circle while beneath them the flock of clak-claksscreamed and dived at the slanting nose of the Terran ship. Then thatsame slashing energy he had watched quarter the camp snapped from thefar plate across the stricken scout. The man who had piloted her, if notdead already (which might account for the lack of defense), must havefallen victim to that. But the Throg was going to make very sure. Thesecond flyer halted, remaining poised long enough to unleash a secondbolt--dazzling any watching eyes and broadcasting a vibration to makeShann's skin crawl when the last faint ripple reached his lookout post.
What happened then the overconfident Throg was not prepared to take.Shann cried out, burying his face on his arm, as pinwheels of scarletlight blotted out normal sight. There was an explosion, a deafeningblast. He cowered, blind, unable to hear. Then, rubbing at his eyes, hetried to see what had happened.
Through watery blurs he made out the Throg ship, not swinging now inserene indifference to Warlock's gravity, but whirling end over endacross the sky as might a leaf tossed in a gust of wind. Its rim caughtagainst a rust-red cliff, it rebounded and crumpled. Then it came down,smashing perhaps half a mile away from the smoking crater in which laythe mangled wreckage of the Terran ship. The disabled scout pilot musthave played a last desperate game, making of his ship bait for a trap.
The Terran had taken one Throg with him. Shann rubbed again at his eyes,just barely able to catch a glimpse of the second ship flashing awaywestward. Perhaps it was only his impaired sight, but it appeared to himthat the Throg fol
lowed an erratic path, either as if the pilot fearedto be caught by a second shot, or because that ship had also sufferedsome injury.
Acid smoke wreathed up from the valley making Shann retch and cough.There could be no survivor from the Terran scout, and he did not believethat any Throg had lived to crawl free of the crumpled plate. But therewould be other beetles swarming here soon. They would not dare to leavethe scene unsearched. He wondered about that scout. Had the pilot beenaiming for the Survey camp, the absence of any rider beam from therewarning him off so that he made the detour which brought him here? Orhad the Throgs tried to blast the Terran ship in the upper atmosphere,crippling it, making this a forced landing? But at least this battle hadcost the Throgs, settling a small portion of the Terran debt for thelost camp.
The length of time between Shann's sighting of the grounded ship and theattack by the Throgs had been so short that he had not really developedany strong hope of rescue to be destroyed by the end of the crippledship. On the other hand, seeing the Throgs take a beating had explodedhis subconscious acceptance of their superiority. He might not have eventhe resources of a damaged scout at his command. But he did have Taggi,Togi, and his own brain. Since he was fated to permanent exile onWarlock, there might just be some way to make the beetles pay for that.
He licked his lips. Real action against the aliens would take a lot ofplanning. Shann would have to know more about what made a Throg a Throg,more than all the wild stories he had heard over the years. There _had_to be some way a Terran could move effectively against a beetle-head.And he had a lot of time, maybe the rest of his life to work out a fewanswers. That Throg ship lying wrecked at the foot of the cliff ...perhaps he could do a little investigating before any rescue squadarrived. Shann decided such a move was worth the try and whistled to thewolverines.