Part 9 (1/2)
”Come on,” Hosteen called, already on his way from the roof.
”Make it quick,” Logan answered.
That could be their best defense-a running leap with impetus enough to tear a man through the beam. Hosteen knew of no other way to cross without the s.h.i.+elds they did not possess. Having tested the straps of their equipment, they toed the mark just beside the outer wall, then sprinted for the pole line.
Hosteen launched himself, felt the tearing of the sonic waves as he shot through them, landed beyond, to roll helplessly, battling unconsciousness. Logan spiraled over him with flailing arms and legs and lay now beyond.
Somehow the Terran fought to his knees. It seemed to him the shock this time was less. He crawled to Logan, who was now striving to sit up, his mouth drawn crooked in his effort to control his whisper.
”We made it-”
They crouched together, shoulder touching shoulder, until their heads cleared and they were able to stand. Then they headed for the man by the pillar.
Hosteen recognized the torn coverall. ”Widders! Widders!” He wavered forward, to go down again beside the quiet form. Then his eyes fastened on one outflung hand unbelievingly.
Skin over bone, with the bone itself breaking through the tight pull of the skin on the knuckles! Fighting his fear of the dead, the inborn sense of defilement, he took the body by one shoulder, rolled it over on its back- ”No-no!” Logan's cry was one of raw horror.
This thing had been Widders, Hosteen was sure of that. What it was now, what anyone could swear to, was that it might once have been human. The Terran thrust his hands deep into the harshness of the sand, scrubbed them back and forth, wondering if he would ever be able to forget that he had touched this-this- ”What did-that?” Logan's demand was a whisper.
”I don't know.” Hosteen stood up, one hand pressed to his heaving middle. His instinct had been right. Somewhere here lurked a hunter-a hunter whose method of feeding was far removed from the sanity of human life. They must get away-out of here-now!
He grabbed for Logan, shoved him toward the pa.s.sage Widders must have been trying to reach when he had been pulled down. There was a horror loose in this place that had not died long ago in those pens-if it had ever been confined there.
They ran for the open pa.s.sage and sped into the dark mouth of the tunnel. And they fled on blindly into that thick dark until there was a band of tight, hard pain about their lower ribs and the panic that had spurred them could no longer push their tired bodies into fresh effort. Then, clinging together, as if the touch of flesh against flesh was a defense against the insanity behind, they sat on the floor, dragging in the dead air in ragged, painful gasps.
CHAPTER TWELVE.
”This-is-an-open-pa.s.sage.” Logan's warning came in separated words.
He was right. There was nothing to prevent that which had hunted Widders from prowling into this dark tunnel. Perhaps even now it lurked in the dim reaches ahead.
The arm Hosteen had flung about Logan's heaving shoulders tightened spasmodically. He must not let panic crowd out reason-that would deliver them both over to death. They had to keep thinking clearly.
”We have the grenades and the torch,” he rea.s.sured himself as well as his companion. ”Widders did not have his equipment-no light or weapon. It was a miracle he got even this far.”
The shudders that had been shaking Logan were not so continuous.
”Scared as a paca rat caught in a grain bin!” The answer came with a ghost of the old wry humor Logan had always summoned to front disaster. ”Never broke and ran like that before, though.”
”That was enough to make both of us bolt,” Hosteen replied. ”You didn't see me holding back any, did you? But now I think we are past the trapped paca-rat stage.”
Logan's hand tightened on Hosteen's forearm in a grip of rough affection and then fell away. ”You're right, brother. We've moved up a few steps in the panic scale-maybe now we're on the level of a frawn bull. But I want to be a tough yoris before we face somethin' alive and kickin'.”
”Two yoris it is,” Hosteen agreed. ”I'd say keep straight ahead, but at less of a scamper.”
He fingered the atom torch indecisively. If he switched that on, would the beam signal a lurker? But the advantage of light over dark won. With the enemy revealed in the light, they would have a chance to use their grenades.
As the pa.s.sage continued to bore ahead through the stuff of the mountain, Hosteen marveled at the extent of the under-the-surface work. More than just the first mountain must be occupied by this labyrinth. He was sure they were well beyond the height up which the Norbies had originally driven their captives.
There were no signs that anything had come this way before them, and the first stark shock of Widders' end lost some of its impact on their minds. Hosteen sighted a gray glimmer ahead and switched off the torch so that they could approach another tunnel mouth warily.
Here projections hung down from overhead and stood up out of the floor of the pa.s.sage, so they pa.s.sed between two rows of pointed objects as thick as a man's leg. And set in a curved s.p.a.ce well above their heads were three ovals of a blood-red, transparent substance through which light streamed in gory beams.
What lay beyond the opening was sun heat-the sun heat of the parched outer world, where the Big Dry reigned uncontrolled.
They hunched down between those pointed pillars, s.h.i.+elded their eyes against the punis.h.i.+ng glare, and tried to pick out some route across that seared landscape.
In the s.h.i.+mmer of the heat waves there was a thin line of poles running-with a gap here and there-into the distance, just as the poles had marked the sonic barrier before the pens.
Hosteen used the lenses to trace that line, but the glare of that open oven was as deceptive as the foggy murk of the interior cavern.
”We'll have to lay up and wait for dark.” Logan drew his knees up to bis chest and folded his arms about them.
”Nothin' could last for a half hour out there now.”
How far did that guiding line of poles stretch? Could one find shelter at the end of that path before the coming of another day? And was this indeed open country?
”Open country?” Hosteen repeated questioningly.
”You think this might be another controlled cavern, to hold things enjoyin' bein' baked?”
”There are those poles-they must have run a sonic through here once.” Hosteen pointed out the obvious.
”And there are a lot of gaps in that now, too.” Logan squinted to study the way ahead. ”Do we go back-or do we try it?”
”I'd say try it-at least part way. If night does come here, we can try and turn back if we can't see an end within safe travel distance.”
”That makes sense,” Logan conceded. ”We wait.”
Hope was thin. Much depended now on whether this was another cavern under weather control-the wrong kind of control for them-or the open. For human eyes, there was no looking up into the inferno that marked the possible sky. Hosteen had thought that the heat and glare when they first reached the end of the pa.s.sage had been that of early afternoon. So they would wait for a night that might never fall or start the long trail back to that distant cave into which the Norbies had sealed them.
Uneasily they slept in turn, keeping watch as the time crept leadenly by. Suddenly, Hosteen was aroused from a doze by Logan's shaking.
”Look!”
Where the light had been-a yellow-white their eyes could meet only with actual pain-there was now a reddish glow. The Terran had seen its like too many times to be mistaken. Yes, there was a night out there, and it was now on its way. They need only wait for true dusk and then follow the road marked by the pole line.
They ate, drank sparingly of their water, and waited impatiently for the red to deepen to purple, the purple that meant freedom. But as they waited, Hosteen walked forward between the projections, his senses alert-to what? There was no sound out of the desert ahead, nothing moving there.
With the lenses he could follow the pole line well ahead-bare rock, the poles, with gaps in their marching line. No vegetation, no place for any living thing he had seen yet on Arzor. Yet, inside him, there was a growing fear of that sere landscape, a tension far higher in pitch than any he had known before in any of the tunnels and caverns they had traversed.
”What is it?”
Startled, Hosteen looked back over his shoulder. Logan had been testing the fastening of the canteens. But now he, too, was staring with narrowed eyes into the open.
”I don't know,” the other answered slowly. ”This-is- strange-”