Star Hunter (5 page)

"Too long a wait might run us into trouble. Wass doesn't like
trouble."

Hume spun around. In the half light of the fire his features were set,
his mouth grim. "Neither do I, Rovald, neither do I!" he said softly,
but with an icy promise beneath the words.

Rovald was not to be intimidated. He grinned. "Set your fins down,
fly-boy. You need Wass—and I'm here to hold his stakes for him. This
is a big deal, we won't want any misses!"

"There won't be any—not from my side." Hume stepped away from the
fire, approached a post which gleamed with a dull, red line of fire
down either side. He pressed a control button. That red line flared
into a streak of brilliance. Now encircling the bubble tents and the
space ship was a force field: routine protection of a safari camp on a
strange world and one Hume had set as a matter of course.

He stood for a long moment staring through that invisible barrier
toward the direction of the wood. It was a dark night, there were
scudding clouds to hide the stars, which meant rain probably before
morning. This was no time to be plagued by uncertain weather.

Somewhere out there Brodie was holed up. He hoped the boy had long ago
reached the "camp" so carefully erected and left for his occupancy.
The L-B, that stone covered "grave" showing signs of several years'
occupancy, was all assembled and constructed to the last small detail.
Far less might have deceived the civs in this safari. But as soon as
the story of their find leaked, there would be others on the scene,
men trained to assess the signs of a castaway's fight for survival.
His own Guild training and the ability of Wass' renegade techs should
bring them through that test.

What had Starns seen? The glint of sun on the tail of the L-B, tilted
now to the sky? Hume walked slowly back to the fire, when he saw
Rovald going up the ramp into the spacer. He smiled. Did Wass think he
was stupid enough not to guess that the Veep's man would be in com
touch with his employer? Rovald was about to report along some channel
of the shadow world that they had landed and that the play was about
to begin. Hume wondered idly how far and through how many relays that
message would pass before it reached its destination.

He stretched and yawned, moving to his sleeping pad. Tomorrow they
must find Chambriss a water-cat. Hume shoved Brodie into the back of
his mind to center his thoughts on the various ways of delivering, to
the waiting sportsman, a fair-sized alien feline.

The lights in the bubbles went out one by one. Within the circle
barrier of the force field men slept. And by midnight the rain began
to fall, streaming down the sides of the bubbles, soaking the ashes of
the fire.

Out of the dark crept that which was not thought, not substance, but
alien to the off-world men. But the barrier, meant to deter
multi-footed creatures, with wings or no visible limbs at all, proved
to be a better protection than its creators had hoped. There was no
penetration—only a baffled butting of one force against another. And
then the probe withdrew as undetected as it had come.

Only, the thing which had no intelligence, as humankind rated
intelligence, did possess the ability to fathom the nature of that
artificial barrier. The force field was examined, its nature digested.
First approach had failed. The second was now ready—ready as it had
not been months before when the first coming of these creatures had
alerted the very ancient watchdog on Jumala.

Deep in the darker woods on the mountain sides there was a stirring.
Things whimpered in their sleep, protested subconsciously commands
they could never understand, only obey. With the coming of dawn there
would be a marshaling of hosts, a new assault—not on the camp, but on
any leaving its protection. And also on the boy now sleeping in a
shallow cave formed by the swept roots of a tree—a tree which had
crashed when the L-B landed.

Again, fortune favored Hume. With the dawn the rain was over. There
was a cloudy sky overhead, but he believed the day would clear. The
roily, rushing water of the river would aid Chambriss' quest.
Water-cats holed up in the banks, but rising water often forced them
out of such dens. A course parallel to the stream bed could well show
them the tracks of one of the felines.

They started off in a group, Hume leading, with Chambriss treading
briskly behind him, Rovald bringing up the rear in the approved trail
technique. Chambriss carried a needler, Starns was unarmed except for
a small protection stunner, his tri-dee box slung on his chest by
well-worn carrying straps. Yactisi shouldered an electric pole, wore
its control belt buckled about his middle, though Hume had warned him
that the storm would prevent any deep hole fishing.

Only a short distance from the campsite they came upon the
unmistakable marks of a water-cat's broad paws, pressed in so heavy
and distinct a pattern that Hume knew the animal could not be far
ahead. The indentations were deep, and he measured the distance
between them with the length of his hand.

"Big one!" Chambriss exclaimed in satisfaction. "Going away from the
river, too."

That point puzzled Hume slightly. The red coated felines might be
washed out of their burrows, but they did not willingly head so
sharply away from the water. He squatted on his heels and surveyed the
stretch of countryside between them and the distant wood with care.

The grass was this season's, still growing, not tall enough to afford
cover for an animal with paws as large as these prints. There were two
clumps of brush. It could have holed up in either, waiting to attack
any trailer—but why? It had not been wounded, nor frightened by their
party, there was no reason for it to set an ambush on its back trail.

Starns and Yactisi dropped back, though Starns was fussing with his
tri-dee. Rovald caught up. He had drawn his ray tube in answer to
Hume's hand wave. Any action foreign to the regular habits of an
animal was to be mistrusted.

Getting to his feet Hume paced along the line of marks. They were
fresh—hot fresh. And they still led in a straight line for the woods.
With another wave of his hand he stopped Chambriss. The civ was
trained in spite of his eagerness and obeyed. Hume left the tracks,
made a detour which brought him to a point from which he could study
those clumps of brush. No sign except that line of prints pointed to
the woods. And if the party kept on, they might well come upon the
L-B!

He decided to risk it. But when they were less than a couple of yards
from the tree fringe his hand shot up to direct Chambriss to fire
towards the quivering bush.

Only, that formless half seen thing, hardly to be distinguished in
color from the vegetation, was no water-cat. There was a thin, ragged
cry. Then the creature plunged backward, was gone.

"What in the name of nine Gods was that?" Chambriss demanded.

"I don't know." Hume went forward, jerked the needler dart from a tree
trunk. "But don't shoot again—not unless you are sure of what you are
aiming at!"

Moisture from the night's rain hung on the tree leaves, clung in
globules to Rynch's sweating body. He lay on a wide branch trying to
control the heavy panting which supplied his laboring lungs. And he
could still hear the echoes of the startled cries which had come from
the men who had threaded through the woods to the up-pointed tail fins
of the L-B.

Now he tried to reason why he had run. They were his own kind, they
would take him out of the loneliness of a world heretofore empty of
his species. But that tall man—the one who had led the party into the
irregular clearing about the life boat—

Rynch shivered, dug his nails into the wood on which he lay. At the
sight of that man, dream and reality had crashed together, sending him
into panic-stricken flight. That was the man from the room—the man
with the cup!

As his heart quieted he began to think more coherently. First, he had
not been able to find the strong-jaws's den. Then the marks on the
ground at the point from which he had fallen and the L-B were here,
just as he remembered. But not far from the small ship he had
discovered something more—a campsite with a shelter fashioned out of
spalls and vines, containing possessions a castaway might have
accumulated.

That man would come, Rynch was sure of that, but he was too spent to
struggle on.

No, the answer to every part of the puzzle lay with that man. To go
back to the ship clearing was to risk capture—but he had to know.
Rynch looked with more attention at his present surroundings. Deep
mold under the trees here would hold tracks. There might just be
another way to move. He eyed the spread of limbs on a neighbor tree.

His journey through those heights was awkward and he sweated and
cringed when he disturbed vocal treetop dwellers. He was also to
discover that close to the site of the L-B crash others waited.

He huddled against the bole of a tree when he made out the curve of a
round bulk holding tight to the tree trunk aloft. Though it was balled
in upon itself he was sure the creature was fully as large as he, and
the menacing claws suggested it was a formidable opponent.

When it made no move to follow him Rynch began to hope it had only
been defending its own hiding place, for its present attitude
suggested concealment.

Still facing that featureless blob in the tree, the man retreated,
alert for the first sign of advance on the part of the creature above.
None came, and he dared to slip around the bole of the tree under
which he stood, listening intently for any corresponding movement
overhead. Now he was facing that survivor's camp.

Another object crouched in the dark of the lean-to shelter, just as
its fellow was on sentry duty in the tree! Only this one did not have
the self-color of the foliage to disguise it. Four-limbed, its long
forearms curved about its bent knees, its general outline almost that
of a human—if a human went clothed in a thick fuzz. The head hunched
right against the shoulders as if the neck were very short, or totally
lacking, was pear-shaped, with the longer end to the back, and the
sense organs of eyes and nose squeezed together on the lower quarter
of the rounded portion, with a line of wide mouth to split the blunt
round of the muzzle. Dark pits for eyes showed no pupil, iris, or
cornea. The nose was a black, perfectly rounded tube jutting an inch
or so beyond the cheek surface. Grotesque, alien and terrifying, it
made no hostile move. And, since it had not turned its head, he could
not be sure it had even sighted him. But it knew he was there, he was
certain of that. And was waiting—for what? As the long seconds
crawled by Rynch began to believe that it was not waiting for him.
Heartened, he pulled at the vine loop, climbed back into the tree.

Minutes later he discovered that there were more than two of the
beasts waiting quietly about the camp, and that their sentry line ran
between him and the clearing of the L-B. He withdrew farther into the
wood, intent upon finding a detour which would bring him out into the
open lands. Now he wanted to join forces with his own kind, whether
those men were potential enemies or not.

As time passed the beasts closed about the clearing of the camp.
Afternoon was fading into evening when he reached a point several
miles downstream near the river. Since he had come into the open he
had not sighted any of the watchers. He hoped they did not willingly
venture out of the trees where the leaves were their protection.

Rynch went flat on the stream bank, made a worm's progress up the
slope to crouch behind a bush and survey the land immediately ahead.
There stood an off-world spacer, fins down, nose skyward, and grouped
not too far from its landing ramp, a collection of bubble tents. A
fire burned in their midst and men were moving about it.

Now that he was free from the wood and its watchers and had come so
near to his goal, Rynch was curiously reluctant to do the sensible
thing, to rise out of concealment and walk up to that fire, to claim
rescue by his own kind.

The man he sought stood by the fire, shrugging his arms into a webbing
harness which brought a box against his chest. Having made that fast
he picked up a needler by its sling. By their gestures the others were
arguing with him, but he shook his head, came on, to be a shadow
stalking among other shadows. One of the men trailed him, but as they
reached a post planted a little beyond the bubble tents he stopped,
allowed the explorer to advance alone into the dark.

Rynch went to cover under a bush. The man was heading to the stream
bed. Had they somehow learned of his own presence nearby, were they
out to find him? But the preparations the tall man had made seemed
more suited to going on patrol. The watchers! Was the other out to spy
on them? That idea made sense. And in the meantime he would let the
other past him, follow along behind until he was far enough from the
camp so that his friends could not interfere—then, they would have a
meeting!

Rynch's fingers balled into fists. He would find out what was real,
what was a dream in this crazy, mixed up mind of his! That other would
know, and would tell him the truth!

Alert as he was, he lost sight of the stranger who melted into the
dusky cover of the shadows. Then came a quiet ripple of water close to
his own hiding place. The man from the spacer camp was using the
stream as his road.

In spite of his caution Rynch was close to betrayal as he edged around
a clump of vegetation growing half in, half out of the stream. Only a
timely rustle told him that the other had sat down on a drift log.

Waiting for him? Rynch froze, so startled that he could not think
clearly for a second. Then he noted that the outline of the other's
body was visible, growing brighter by the moment.