Star Hunter (12 page)

And from above, in spite of the turgid quality of the liquid, they
could see what did rest on the bottom of that oval. The wall with its
sharp corner which Vye had noted from shore level was only part of a
water covered erection. It made a design when seen from overhead, a
six-pointed star surrounding an oval and in the midst of that oval a
black blot which they could not identify.

Hume brought the flitter over in one last sweep. "That's it. We have a
full taping."

"What do you think it is?"

"A device set there by an intelligent being, and set a long time ago.
This valley wasn't arranged over night, six months ago—or even a year
ago. We'll have to let the experts tell us when and for what reason.
Now, let's head for home!"

He brought the flitter up and over the valley wall, flying southwest
so that they passed over the gap which was the main entrance to the
trap. And now he tried the com unit, endeavoring to pick up a signal
on which they could beam in for a safe ride.

"That's odd." Under Hume's control the direction finder passed back
and forth without bringing any answering code click from the mike. "We
may be too far in the mountains to pick up the beam. I wonder...." He
swept the needle in another direction, slightly to the left.

A crackle spat from the mike. Vye could not read code but the very
fury and intensity of that sound suggested panic—even terror.

"What's that?"

Hume spoke without looking away from the control board. "Alarm."

"From the safari?"

"No. Wass." For a long second Hume sat very still, his fingers quiet.
The flitter was on the automatic course, taking them out of the
mountains, and Vye thought that their air speed was such they were
already well removed from that sinister valley.

Hume made a slight adjustment to a dial, and the flitter banked,
coming around on another course. Once more he spun the finder of the
com. This time he was answered with a series of well-spaced clicks
which lacked the urgency of that other call. Hume listened until the
code rattled into silence again.

"They're all right at the safari camp."

"But Wass is in trouble. So what does that matter?" Vye wanted to
know.

"It matters this much." Hume spoke slowly as if he must convince
himself as well as Vye. "I'm the Guild man on Jumala, and the Guild
man is responsible for all civs."

"You can't call him your client!"

Hume shook his head. "No, he's no client. But he's human."

It narrowed down to that when a man was on the frontier worlds—humans
stood together. Vye wanted to deny it, but his own emotions, as well
as the centuries of age-old tradition, argued him down. Wass was a
Veep, one of the criminal parasites dabbling in human misery along
more than one solar lane. But he was also human and, as one of their
own species, had his claim on them.

Vye watched Hume take over the controls, felt the flitter answer
another change of course, then heard the frantic yammer of the
distress call as they leveled off to ride its beam in to the hidden
camp.

"Automatic." Hume had turned down the volume of the receiver so that
the clicks in the mike no longer were so strident. "Set on maximum and
left that way."

"They had a force barrier around the camp and they knew about the
globes and the watchers." Vye tried to imagine what had happened in
that woods clearing.

"The barrier might have shorted. And without the flitter they would
have been pinned."

"Could have taken off in the spacer."

"Wass doesn't have the reputation of letting any project get out of
his hands."

Vye remembered. "Oh—your billion credit deal."

To his surprise Hume laughed. "Seems all very far and out of orbit
now, doesn't it, Lansor? Yes, our billion credit deal—but that was
thought out before we knew there were more players around the table
than we counted. I wonder...."

But what he wondered he did not put into words and a moment later he
added over his shoulder, "Better try to get some rest, boy. We've some
time to a set-down."

Vye did sleep, deeply, dreamlessly. And he roused after a gentle
shaking to see a beam of light in the sky ahead, though around them
was the solid darkness of night.

"That's a warning," Hume explained. "And I can't raise any reply from
the camp except a repeat of the distress call. If there is anyone
there now, he can't or won't answer."

Against that column of light they could make out the sky-pointed taper
of the spacer and the auto-pilot landed them beside that ship in the
middle of an area well lighted by the steady shaft of light from the
tripod standing where the atom lamp had been on the night they had
made their escape from camp.

Climbing stiffly from the small flyer they advanced with caution. A
very few minutes later Hume slid his ray tube back into its belt loop.

"Unless they've holed up in the spacer—and I can't see why they'd do
that—this camp's deserted. And they haven't taken any equipment with
them except maybe a few items they could back-pack."

The ship proved as empty of life as the campsite. A wall seat pulled
out too hastily so that it was jammed awry, the com cabin suggested
that the leave-taking, when and for what reason, had been a matter of
some emergency. Hume did not touch the tape set to keep on
broadcasting the call for assistance.

"What now?" Vye wanted to know as they completed the search.

"The safari camp first—and a call for the Patrol."

"Look here," Vye set down the ration container he had found, was
emptying it with vast satisfaction of one who had been too long on
tablets, "if you beam the Patrol you'll have to talk, won't you?"

Hume went on fitting new charges into his ray tube. "The Patrol has to
have a full report. There's no way of bypassing that. Yes, we'll have
to give all the story. You needn't worry." He snapped closed the load
chamber. "I can clear you all the way. You're the victim, remember."

"I wasn't thinking about that."

"Boy." Hume tossed the tube up in the air, caught it in his
plasta-hand. "I went into this deal with my eyes wide open—why
doesn't matter very much now. In fact," he stared beyond Vye out into
the empty, lighted camp, "I've begun to wonder about a lot of
things—maybe too late. No—we'll call the Patrol and we'll do it not
because it is Wass and his men out there, but because we're human and
they're human, and there's a nasty set-up here which has already
sucked in other humans for its own purposes."

The skeleton in the valley! And how very close they had been
themselves to joining that unknown in his permanent residence.

"So now we make time—back to the safari camp. Get our message off to
the Patrol and then we'll try to trace Wass and see what we can do.
Jumala is off a regular route. The Patrol won't be here tomorrow at
sunrise, no matter how much we wish a scouter would planet then."

Vye was quiet as he stowed in the flitter again. As Hume had said,
events moved fast. A little while ago he had wanted to settle with
this Out-Hunter, wring out of him not only an explanation for his
being here, but claim satisfaction for the humiliation of being moved
about to suit some others' purposes. Now he was willing to defeat
Wass, bring in the Patrol, go up against whatever hid in that lake up
there, providing Hume was not the loser. He tried to think why that
was so and could not, he only knew it was the truth.

They were both silent as they took off from Wass' deserted camp, sped
away over the black blot of the woodland towards the safari
headquarters on the plains. There were stars above again but no
globes. Just as they had won their freedom from the valley, so they
moved without escort on the plains.

But the lights were there—not impinging on the flitter, or patrolling
along its line of flight. No, they hung in a glowing cluster ahead
when in the dawn the flitter shot away from the woods, headed for the
landmark of the safari camp. A crown of lights circled over the camp
site, as if those below were in a state of siege.

Hume aimed straight for them and this time the bobbing circle split
wide open, broke to left and right. Vye looked below. Though the
grayness of the morning was still hardly more than dusk he could not
miss those humps spaced at intervals on the land, just beyond the
unseen line of the force barrier. The lights above, the beasts below,
the safari camp was under guard.

"There is only one way they could be moving—toward the mountains."
Hume stood in the open space among the bubble tents, facing him the
four men of the camp, the three civs and Rovald. "You say it's been
seven days, planet time, since I left here. They may have been five
days on that trail. If possible we have to stop them before they reach
that valley."

"A fantastic story." Chambriss wore the affronted expression of a man
who expected no interference with his own concerns. Then catching
Hume's eye he added, "Not that we doubt you, Hunter. We have the
evidence in those dumb brutes waiting out there. However, by your own
story, this Wass is an outside-the-law Veep, on this planet secretly
for criminal purposes. Surely there is no reason for us to risk our
safety in his behalf. Are you certain he is in any danger at all? You
and this young man here have, by your testimony, been into the
enemies' territory and have been able to get out again."

"Through a series of fortunate chances which might never occur again."
Hume was patient, too patient, Rovald seemed to think. His hand moved,
he was holding a ray tube so that a simple movement of the wrist could
send a crisping blast across all the rest of the party.

"I say, stop this yapping and get out there and pick up the Veep!"

"I intend to—after I call the Patrol."

Rovald's tube was now aimed directly at Hume. "No Patrol!" he
ordered.

"This wrangling has gone far enough." It was Yactisi who spoke with an
authority which startled them all. And as their attention swung to
him, he was already in action.

Rovald cried out, the weapon spun from his fingers, fingers which were
slowly reddening. Yactisi nodded with satisfaction and he held his
electo pole ready for a second attack. Vye scooped up the tube which
had whirled across the ground to strike against his borrowed boot.

"I'll set the call for the Patrol, then I'll try to locate Wass," Hume
stated.

"Sensible procedure," Yactisi approved in his dry voice. "You believe
that you are now immune to whatever force this alien installation
controls?"

"It would seem so."

"Then, of course, you must go."

"Why?" Chambriss countered for the second time. "Suppose he isn't so
immune after all? Suppose he gets out there and is captured again?
He's our pilot—do you want to be planet bound
here
?

"This man is also a pilot." Starns indicated Rovald, who was nursing
his numb hand.

"Since he, too, is one of these criminals, he's not to be trusted!"
Chambriss shot back. "Hunter, I demand that you take us off planet at
once! And it is only fair to inform you that I also intend to prefer
charges against you and against the Guild. Empty world! Just how empty
have we found this world?"

"But, Gentlehomo," Starns showed no signs of any emotion but eager
curiosity, "to be here at this time is a privilege we could not hope
to equal except by good fortune! The T-Casts will be avid for our
stories."

What had that to do with the matter, puzzled Vye. But he saw Starns'
reminder produce a quick change in Chambriss.

"The T-Casts," he repeated, his expression of anger smoothing away.
"Yes, of course, this is, in a manner of speaking, a truly historic
occasion. We are in a unique position!"

Had Yactisi smiled? That change of lip line had been so slight Vye
could not call it a smile. But Starns appeared to have found the right
way to handle Chambriss. And it was the same little man who offered
his services in another way when he said, diffidently to Hume:

"I have some experience with coms, Hunter. Do you wish me to send your
message and take over the unit until you return? I gather," he added
with a certain delicacy, "that it will not be expedient for your
gearman to engage in that duty now."

So it was that Starns was installed in the com cabin of the spacer,
sending out the request for Patrol aid, while Rovald was locked in the
storage compartment of the same ship, pending arrival of those same
authorities. As Hume sorted out supplies and Vye loaded them into the
waiting flitter, Yactisi approached the Hunter.

"You have a definite plan of search?"

"Just to cast north from their camp. If they've been gone long enough
to hit the foothills we may be able to sight them climbing. Otherwise,
we'll go all the way up to the valley, wait for them there."

"You don't believe that they will be released after they have
been—processed?"

Hume shook his head. "I don't think we would have been free,
Gentlehomo, if it hadn't been for a series of fortunate accidents."

"Yes, though you didn't give us many details about that, Hunter."

Hume put down the needler he had been charging. He studied Yactisi
across that weapon.

"Who are you?" His voice was soft but carried a snap.

For the first time Vye saw the tall, lean civ really smile.

"A man of many interests, Hunter—shall we let it go at that for the
present? Though I assure you that Wass is not one of them in the way
you might believe."

Gray eyes met brown, held so straightly. Then Hume spoke. "I believe
you. But I have told you the truth."

"I have never doubted that—only the amount of it. There must be more
talking later on—you understand that?"

"I never thought otherwise." Hume set the needler inside the flitter.
The civ smiled again, this time including Vye in that evidence of good
will before he walked away.