III
"You are truly a man of power!"
Tau shook his head in answer to that outburst from Asaki.
"Not so, sir. Your Lumbrilo is a man of power. I drew upon his power andyou saw the results."
"Deny it not! What we saw never walked this world."
Tau slung the strap of a trail bag over his shoulder. "Sir, once men ofyour blood, men who bred your race, hunted the elephant. They took histusks for their treasure, feasted upon his flesh--yes, and died beneaththe trampling of his feet when they were unlucky or unwary. So there isthat within you which can even now be awakened to remember _eldama_ inhis might when he was king of the herd and need fear nothing save thespears and cunning of small, weak men. Lumbrilo had already awakenedyour minds to see what he willed you to see."
"How does he do this?" asked the other simply. "Is it magic that we seenot Lumbrilo but a lion before us?"
"He weaves his spell with the drums, with the chant, by the suggestionhis mind imposes upon yours. And, having woven his spell, he cannotlimit it to just the picture he suggests if ancient racial memoriesraise another. I merely used the tools of Lumbrilo to show you yetanother picture your people once knew well."
"And in so doing made an enemy." Asaki stood before a rack of verymodern weapons. Now he made his selection, a silver tube with a stockcurved to fit a man's shoulder. "Lumbrilo will not forget."
Tau laughed shortly. "No, but then I have merely done as you wished,have I not, sir? I have focused on myself the enmity of a dangerous man,and now you hope I shall be forced, in self-defense, to remove him fromyour path."
The Khatkan turned slowly, resting the weapon across his forearm. "I donot deny that, spaceman."
"Then matters here are indeed serious--"
"They are so serious," Asaki interrupted, speaking not only to Tau butto the other off-worlders as well, "that what happens now may mean theend of the Khatka that I know. Lumbrilo is the most dangerous game Ihave faced in a lifetime as a hunter. He goes, or we draw his fangs--orelse all that I am, all I have labored here to build, will be sweptaway. To preserve this I will use any weapon."
"And I am now your weapon, which you hope will be as successful as thatneedler you are carrying." Tau laughed again, without much humor. "Letus hope I shall prove as effective."
Jellico moved out of the shadows. It was just after dawn, and thegrayness of the vanishing night still held in the corners of the armory.Deliberately he took his own stand before the arms racks and chose ashort-barreled blaster. Only when its butt was cupped in his hand did heglance at his host.
"We came guesting, Asaki. We have eaten salt and bread under this roof."
"On my body and my blood it is," returned the Khatkan grimly. "I shallgo down to the blackness of Sabra before you do, if the flames of deathare against us." From his belt he flipped loose his knife and offeredthe hilt to Jellico. "My body for a wall between you and the dark,Captain. But also understand this: to me, what I do now is greater thanthe life of any one man. Lumbrilo and the evil behind him must be rootedout. There was no trickery in my invitation!"
They stood eye to eye, equal in height, in authority of person, and thatindefinable something which made them both masters in their owndifferent worlds. Then Jellico's hand went out, his fingertip flickedthe hilt of the bared blade.
"There was no trickery," he conceded. "I knew that your need was greatwhen you came to the _Queen_."
Since both the captain and Tau appeared to accept the situation, Dane,not quite understanding it all, was prepared to follow their lead. Andfor the moment they had nothing more in plan than to visit the Zoborupreserve.
They went by flitter--Asaki, one of his Hunter pilots, and the threefrom the _Queen_--lifting over the rim of mountains behind thefortress-palace and speeding north with the rising sun a flaming ball tothe east. Below, the country was stark--rocks and peaks, deep purpleshadows marking the veins of crevices. But that was swiftly behind andthey were over a sea of greens, many shades of green, with yellow, blue,even red cutting into the general verdant carpet of treetops. Anotherchain of heights and then open land, swales of tall grass already burntyellow by the steady sun. There was a river here, a crazy, twistedstream coiling nearly back upon itself at times.
Once more broken land, land so ravished by prehistoric volcanic actionthat it was a grotesque nightmare of erosion-whittled outcrops andmesas. Asaki pointed to the east. There was a dark patch widening outinto a vast wedge.
"The swamp of Mygra. It has not yet been explored."
"You could air map it," Tau began.
The Chief Ranger was frowning. "Four flitters have been lost tryingthat. Com reports fail when they cross that last mountain ridgeeastward. There is some sort of interference which we do not yetunderstand. Mygra is a place of death; later we may be able to travelalong its fringe and then you shall see. Now--" He spoke to the pilot inhis own tongue and the flitter pointed up-nose at an angle as theyclimbed over the highest peak they had yet seen in this mountainousland, to reach at last a country of open grass dotted with small foreststands. Jellico nodded approvingly.
"Zoboru?"
"Zoboru," Asaki assented. "We shall go up to the northern end of thepreserve. I wish to show you the roosts of the fastals. This is theirnesting season and the sight is one you will long remember. But we shalltake an eastern course; I have two Ranger stations to check on the way."
It was after they left the second station that the flitter swungfarther out eastward, again climbing over the chain of heights to sightone of the newly discovered wonders the staff at the last station hadreported--a crater lake.
And the flitter skimmed down across water which was a rich emerald inhue, filling the crater from one rock wall to the other with no beach atthe foot of those precipitant cliffs. As the machine arose to clear thefar wall, Dane tensed. One of his duties aboard the _Queen_ was flitterpilot for planetwise trips. And ever since they had taken off thatmorning he had unconsciously flown with the Khatkan pilot, anticipatingeach change or adjustment of the controls. Now he felt that sluggishresponse to the other's lift signal, and instinctively his own hand wentout to adjust a power feed lever.
They made the rise, were well above the danger of the cliff wall. Butthe machine was not responding properly. Dane did not need to watch thepilot's swiftly moving hands to guess that they were in trouble. And hisslight concern deepened into something else as the flitter began to dropnose again. In front of him, Captain Jellico shifted uneasily, and Daneknew that he, too, was alerted.
Now the pilot had plunged the power adjuster to the head against thecontrol board. But the nose of the flitter acted as if it wereoverweighted or magnetically attracted by the rocks below. The bestefforts of the man flying it could not keep it level. They were beingdrawn earthward, and all the pilot could do only delayed the inevitablecrack-up. The Khatkan was turning the machine north to avoid what laybelow, for here a long arm of the Mygra swamp clasped about the foot ofthe mountain.
The Chief Ranger spoke into the mike of the com unit while the pilotcontinued to fight against the pull which was bringing them down. Nowthe small machine was below the level of the volcanic peak which cradledthe lake, and the mountain lay between them and the preserve.
Asaki gave a muffled exclamation, slapped the com box, spoke moresharply into the mike. It was apparent he was not getting the resultshe wanted. Then with a quick glance about he snapped an order:
"Strap in!"
His Terran companions had already buckled the wide webbing beltsintended to save them from crash shock. Dane saw the pilot push thebutton to release fend cushions. In spite of his pounding heart, a smallfraction of his brain recognized the other's skill as the Khatkan took acourse to bring them down on a relatively level patch of sand andgravel.
Dane raised his head from the shelter of his folded arms. The ChiefRanger was busy with the pilot, who lay limply against the controls.Captain Jellico and Tau were already pulling at the buckles of theirprotective crash belts. B
ut one look at the front of the flitter toldDane that it would not take to the air again without extensive repairs.Its nose was bent up and back, obscuring the forward view completely.However, the pilot had made a miraculously safe landing considering theterrain.
Ten minutes later, the pilot restored to consciousness and the gash inhis head bandaged, they held a council of war.
"The com was off, too. I did not have a chance to report before thecrash," Asaki put the situation straightly. "And our exploring partieshave not yet mapped this side of the range; it has a bad reputationbecause of the swamp."
Jellico measured the heights now to their west with resigned eyes."Looks as if we climb."
"Not here," the Chief Ranger corrected him. "There is no passing throughthe crater lake region on foot. We must travel south along the edge ofthe mountain area until we do find a scalable way into the preserveregion."
"You seem very certain we are not going to be rescued if we stay righthere," Tau observed. "Why?"
"Because I'm inclined to believe that any flitter that tries to reach usmay run into the same trouble. Also, they have no com fix on us. It willbe at least a day or more before they will even begin to count usmissing, and then they will have the whole northern portion of thepreserve to comb; there are not enough men here--I can give you amultitude of reasons, Medic."
"One of which might be sabotage?" demanded Jellico.
Asaki shrugged. "Perhaps. I am not loved in some quarters. But there mayalso be something fatal to flitters here as there is over Mygra. Wethought the crater lake district safely beyond the swamp influence, butit may not be so."
But you took the chance of traveling over it, Dane thought, though hedid not comment aloud. Was this another of the Chief Ranger's attemptsto involve them in some private trouble of his own? Though todeliberately smash up a flitter and set them all afoot in thiswilderness was a pretty drastic move.
Asaki had started to unload emergency supplies from the flitter. Theyeach had a trail bag for a pack. But when the pilot staggered over topull out a set of stass belts and Jellico began to uncoil them, theChief Ranger shook his head.
"With the feeder beam shut off by the mountains, I fear those will nolonger work."
Jellico tossed one on the crumpled nose of the flitter and punched itsbutton with the tip of the needler barrel. Then he threw a rock at thedangling belt. The stone landed, taking the wide protective band with itto the ground. That force field which should have warded off the missilewas not working.
"Oh, fine!" Tau opened his trail bag to pack concentrates. Then hesmiled crookedly. "We aren't signed in for killing licenses, sir. Do youpay our fines if we are forced to shoot a hole through something thatdisputes the right of way?"
To Dane's surprise, the Chief Ranger laughed. "You are off preserve now,Medic Tau. The rules do not cover wild land. But I would suggest we nowhunt a cave before nightfall."
"Lions?" asked Jellico.
Dane, remembering the black and white beast Lumbrilo had presented, didnot enjoy that thought. They had--his gaze went from man to man checkingweapons--the needler Asaki carried, and another the pilot had slung byits carrying strap over his shoulder. Tau and the captain both werearmed with blasters and he had a fire ray and a force blade, bothconsidered small arms but deadly enough perhaps even to dampen a lion'senthusiasm for the chase.
"Lions, graz, rock apes," Asaki fastened the mouth of his trail bag."All are hunters or killers. The graz send out scouts, and they are bigand formidable enough to have no enemies. Lions hunt with intelligenceand skill. Rock apes are dangerous, but luckily they cannot keep silentwhen they scent their prey and so give one warning."
As they climbed up-slope from the flitter, Dane, looking back, saw thatperhaps Asaki was right in his belief that they had better try to helpthemselves rather than wait for rescue. Putting aside the excuse offearing another crack-up, the wrecked flitter made no outstanding markon the ground. The higher they climbed, the less it could bedistinguished from the tumble of rocks about it.
He had lagged a little behind and, when he hurried to catch up, foundJellico standing with his distance vision lenses to his eyes, directingthem toward that shadow marking the swamp. As the younger spacemanreached him, the captain lowered the glasses and spoke:
"Take your knife, Thorson, and hold it close to that rock--over there."He pointed to a rounded black knob protruding from the soil a little offtheir path.
Dane obeyed, only to have the blade jerk in his hand. And when heloosened his hold in amazement, the steel slapped tight against thestone.
"Magnetic!"
"Yes. Which might explain our crash. Also this." Jellico held out afield compass to demonstrate that its needle had gone completely mad.
"We can use the mountain range itself for a guide," Dane said with moreconfidence than he felt.
"True enough. But we may have trouble when we head west again." Jellicolet the lenses swing free on their cord about his neck. "If we werewrecked on purpose"--his mouth tightened and the old blaster burn on hischeek stretched as did his jaw set--"then someone is going to answer alot of questions--and fast!"
"The Chief Ranger, sir?"
"I don't know. I just don't know!" The captain grunted as he adjustedhis pack and started on.
If fortune had failed them earlier, she smiled on them now. Asakidiscovered a cave before sundown, located not too far from a mountainstream. The Ranger sniffed the air before that dark opening as theHunter pilot shed his equipment and crept forward on his hands andknees, his head up and his nostrils expanding as he, too, tested thescent from the cave mouth.
Scent? It was closer to a stench, and one ripe enough to turn thestomach of an off-worlder. But the Hunter glanced back over his shoulderand nodded reassuringly.
"Lion. But old. Not here within five days at least."
"Well enough. And even old lion scent will keep away rock apes. We'llclean some and then we can rest undisturbed," was his superior'scomment.
The cleaning was easy for the brittle bedding of dried bracken and grassthe beast had left burned quickly, cleansing with both fire and smoke.When they raked the ashes out with branches, Asaki and Nymani brought inhandfuls of leaves which they crumpled and threw on the floor, spreadingan aromatic odor which banished most of the foulness.
Dane, at the stream with the canteens to fill, chanced upon a small poolwhere there was a spread of smooth yellow sand. Knowing well the manyweird booby traps one might stumble into on a strange world, the Terranprospected carefully, stirring up the stand with a stick. Sighting notso much as a water insect or a curious fish, he pulled off his boots,rolled up his breeches and waded in. The water was cool and refreshing,though he dared not drink it until the purifier was added. Then, withthe filled canteens knotted together by their straps, he put on hisboots and climbed to the cave where Tau waited with water tablets.
Half an hour later Dane sat cross-legged by the fire, turning a spitstrung with three small birds Asaki had brought in. One foot closer tothe heat began to tingle and he eased off his boot; his cramped toessuddenly seeming to have doubled in size. He was staring wide-eyed atthese same toes, puffed, red, and increasingly painful to the touch,when Nymani squatted beside him, inspected his foot closely, and orderedhim to take off his other boot.
"What is it?" Dane found that shedding the other boot was a minortorture in itself.
Nymani was cutting tiny splinters, hardly thicker than a needle, from astick.
"Sand worm--lays eggs in flesh. We burn them out or you have bad foot."
"Burn them out!" Dane echoed, and then swallowed as he watched Nymaniadvance a splinter to the fire.
"Burn them," the Khatkan repeated firmly. "Burn tonight, hurt sometomorrow; all well soon. No burn--very bad."
Dane ruefully prepared to pay the consequences of his first brush withthe unpleasant surprises Khatka had to offer.