Star Hunter (6 page)

Minute particles of pale-greenish radiance were gathering about the
other. The dark shadow of an arm flapped, the radiance swirled, broke
again into pinpoint sparks.

Rynch glanced down at his own body—the same sparks were drifting in
about him, edging his arms, thighs, chest. He pushed back into the
bushes while the sparks still flitted, but they no longer gathered in
strength enough to light his presence. Now he could see they drifted
about the vegetation, about the log where the man sat, about rocks and
reeds. Only they were thicker about the stranger as if his body were a
magnet. He continued to keep them whirling by means of waving hand and
arm, but there was enough light to show Rynch the fingers of his other
hand, busy on the front panel of the box he wore.

That fingering stopped, then Rynch's head came up as he heard a very
faint sound. Not a beast's cry—or was it?

Again those fingers moved on the panel. Was the other sending a
message by that means? Rynch watched him check the webbing, count the
equipment at his belt, settle the needler in the crook of his arm.
Then the stranger left the stream, headed towards the woods.

Rynch jumped to his feet, a cry of warning shaping, but not to be
uttered. He padded after the other. There was plenty of time to stop
the man before he reached the danger which might lurk under the trees.

However the other was as wary of that dark as if he suspected what
might lie in wait there. He angled along northward, avoiding clumps of
scattered brush, keeping in the open where Rynch dared not tail him
too closely.

Their course, parallel to the woods, brought them at last to a second
stream, the size of a river, into which the first creek emptied. Here
the other settled down between two rocks with every indication of
remaining there for a period.

Thankfully Rynch found his own lurking place from which he could keep
the other in sight. The light points gathered, hung in a small
luminous cloud over the rocks. But Rynch had prudently withdrawn under
a bush, and the scent of its aromatic leaves must have discouraged the
sparks, for no such crown came to his sentry post.

Drugged with fatigue, the younger man slept, awaking to full day, a
fog of bewilderment and disorientation. To open his eyes to this
blue-green pocket instead of to four dirty walls, was wrong.

Remembering, he started up and slunk down the slope, angry at his
failure. He found the other's track, not turning back as he had half
feared, cleanly printed on level spots of wet earth—eastward now.
What was the purpose of the other's expedition? Was he going to use
the open cut through which the river ran as a way of penetrating the
wooded country?

Now Rynch considered the problem from his own angle. The man from the
spacer had made no effort to conceal his trail, in fact it would
almost seem that he had deliberately gone out of his way to leave boot
prints on favorable stretches of ground. Did he guess that Rynch
lurked behind, was now leading him on for some purpose of his own? Or
were those traces left to guide another party from the camp?

To advance openly up the stream bed was to invite discovery. Rynch
surveyed the nearer bank. Clumps of small trees and high growing
bushes dotted that expanse, an ideal cover.

He was hardly out of sight of the bush which had sheltered him when he
heard the coughing roar of a water-cat. And the feline was attacking
an enemy, enraged to the pitch of vocal frenzy. Rynch ran a zigzag
course from one clump of bush to the next. That sound of snarling,
spitting hate ended in mid-cry as Rynch crawled to the river bank.

The man from the spacer camp had been the focus of a three-prong
attack from a female and her cubs. Three red bodies were flat and
still on the gravel as the off-worlder leaned back against a rock
breathing heavily. As Rynch sighted him, he stooped to recover the
needler he had dropped, lurched away from the rock towards the water,
and so blundered straight into another Jumalan trap.

His unsteady foot advancing for another step came down on a slippery
surface, and he fell forward as his legs were engulfed in the trap
burrow of a strong-jaws. With a startled cry the man dropped the
needler again, clawed at the ground about him. Already he was buried
to his knees, then his mid-thighs, in the artificial quicksand. But he
had not lost his head and was jerking from side to side in an effort
to pull free.

Rynch got to his feet, walked with slow deliberation down to the
river's brink. The trapped prisoner had shied halfway around,
stretching out his arms to find a firmer grip on some rock large and
heavy enough to anchor him. After his first startled cry he had made
no sound, but now, as he sighted Rynch, his eyes widened and his lips
parted.

The box on his chest caught on a stone he had dragged to him in a
desperate try for support. There was a spitting of sparks and the
stranger worked frantically at the buckle of the webbing harness to
loosen it and toss the whole thing from him. The box struck one of the
dead water-cats, flashed as fur and flesh were singed.

Rynch watched dispassionately before he caught the needler, jerking it
away from the prisoner. The man eyed him steadily, and his expression
did not alter even when Rynch swung the off-world weapon to center its
sights on the late owner.

"Suppose," Rynch's voice was rusty sounding in his own ears, "we talk
now."

The man nodded. "As you wish, Brodie."

"Brodie?" Rynch squatted on his heels.

Those gray eyes, so light in the other's deeply tanned face, narrowed
the smallest fraction, Rynch noted with an inner surge of triumph.

"Were you looking for me?" he added.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"We found an L-B—we wondered if there were survivors."

Slowly Rynch shook his head. "No—you knew I was here. Because you
brought me!" He fashioned his suspicions into one quick thrust.

This time there was not the slightest hint of self-betrayal from the
other.

"You see," Rynch leaned forward, but still well out of reach from the
captive, "I remember!"

Now there was a faint flicker of answer in the man's eyes. He asked
quietly:

"What do you remember, Brodie?"

"Enough to know that I am not Brodie. That I did not get here on the
L-B, did not build that camp."

He ran one hand over the stock of the needler. Whatever motive lay
behind this weird game into which he had been unwillingly introduced,
he was now sure that it was serious enough to be dangerous.

"You have no cup this time."

"So you do remember." The other accepted that calmly. "All right. That
need not necessarily spoil our plans. You have nothing to return to on
Nahuatl—unless you
liked
the Starfall." His voice was icy with
contempt. "To play our roles will be for your advantage, too." He
paused, his gaze centering on Rynch with the intensity of one willing
the desired answer out of his inferior.

Nahuatl. Rynch caught at that. He had been on or in Nahuatl—a planet?
a city? If he could make this man believe he remembered everything
clearly, more than just the scattered patches that he did....

"You had me planted here, then came back to hunt me. Why? What makes
Rynch Brodie so important?"

"Close to a billion credits!" The man from the spacer leaned well back
in the hole, his arms spread flat out on either side to keep his body
from sinking deeper. "A billion credits," he repeated softly.

Rynch laughed. "You'll have to think of a better one than that,
fly-boy."

"The stakes would have to be high, wouldn't they, for us to go to all
this staging? You've been conditioned, Brodie, illegally
brain-channeled!"

To Rynch the words meant nothing. If they ever had, that was gone,
lost in the maze of other things which had been blotted out of his
mind by the Brodie past. But he would not give the other the advantage
of knowing his uncertainty.

"You need a Brodie for a billion credits. But you don't have a Brodie
now!"

To his surprise the prisoner in the earth trap laughed. "I'll have a
Brodie when he's needed. Think about a good share of a billion
credits, boy, keep thinking of that hard."

"I will."

"Thoughts alone won't work it, you know." For the first time there was
a hint of some emotion in the man's voice.

"You mean I need you? I don't think so. I've stopped being a plaque
for someone to play across the board." That expression brought another
momentary flash of hazy memory—a smoky, crowded room where men slid
counters back and forth across tables—not one of Brodie's edited
recalls, but his own.

Rynch stood up, started for the rise of the slope, but before he
topped that he glanced back. The damaged com box still smoked where
its wearer had flung it. Now the man was already straining forward
with both arms, trying to reach a rock just a finger space beyond.
Lucky for him the burrow was an old one, uninhabited. In time he
should be able to work his way out. Meanwhile there was the whole of a
wide countryside in which Rynch could discover a hideout—no one would
find him now against his will.

He tried, as he strode along, to piece together more of his memories
and the scanty information he had had from the Nahuatl man. So he had
been "brain-channeled," given a set of false memories to fit a Rynch
Brodie whose presence on this world meant a billion credits for
someone. He could not believe that this was the spaceman's game alone,
for hadn't he spoken of "we"?

A billion credits! The sum was fantastic, the whole story
unbelievable.

There was a hot stab of pain on his instep. Rynch cried out, stamped
hard. One of the clawed scavengers was crushed. The man leaped back in
time to avoid another step into a swarming mass of them at work on
some unidentifiable carrion. Staring down at the welter of scaled,
segmented bodies and busy claws, he gasped.

Three dead water-cats were near the man trapped in the pit. Bait to
draw these voracious eaters straight to the prisoner. Rynch's empty
stomach heaved. He swung around, ran across the grassy verge of the
upper bank, hoping he was not too late.

As he half fell, half slid down to the water, he saw that the man had
managed to hook the webbing of the smouldering box to him, was casting
it out and dragging it back patiently, aiming at the nearest rock of
size, fruitlessly attempting to hitch its straps over the round of
stone.

Rynch dashed on, caught at that loop of webbing, and dug his heels
into the loose gravel as he began a steady pull. With his aid the
other crawled out, lay panting. Rynch grabbed the man's shoulder,
jerked him away from the body of the female water-cat. He was sure he
had seen a telltale scurrying around the smaller of the dead cubs.

The man straightened, glanced toward Rynch who was backing off, the
needler up and ready between them.

"My turn to ask why?"

Then his gaze followed Rynch's. The smallest cub twitched from side to
side. Not with any faint trace of life, but under the attack of the
scavengers. More scuttled towards the second cub.

"Thanks!" The stranger was on his feet. "My name is Ras Hume. I don't
think I told you that when we last met."

"This doesn't make any difference. I'm not your man, not Brodie!"

Hume shrugged. "You think about it, Brodie, think about it with care.
Come back to camp with me and—"

"No!" Rynch interrupted. "You go your way, I go mine from here on."

Again the other laughed. "Not so simple as all that, boy. We've
started something which can't just be turned off as easily as you snap
down a switch." He took a step or two in Rynch's direction.

The younger man brought up the needler. "Stay right where you are!
Your game, Hume? All right, you play it—but not with me."

"And what are you going to do, take to the woods?"

"What I do is my business, Hume."

"No, my business, too, very much so. I'm giving you a warning, boy, in
return for your help here." He nodded at the pit. "There's something
in that woods—something which didn't show up when the Guild had their
survey exploration here."

"The watchers." Rynch retreated step by step, keeping the needler
ready. "I saw them."

"You've seen them!" Hume was eager. "What do they look like?"

In spite of his desire to be rid of Hume, Rynch found himself
answering that in detail, discovering that on demand he could recall
minutely the description of the animal hiding in the tree, the one who
had waited in the shelter, and those he had glimpsed drawing in about
the L-B clearing.

"No intelligence." Hume turned his head to survey the distant wood.
"The verifier reported no intelligence."

"These watchers—you don't know them?"

"No. Nor do I like what you've seen of them, Brodie. So I'm willing to
call a truce. The Guild believed Jumala an open planet, our records
accredited it so. If that is not true we may be in for bad trouble. As
an Out-Hunter I am responsible for the safety of three civs back there
in the safari camp."

Hume made sense, much as Rynch disliked admitting it. And the Hunter
must have read something of his agreement in his face for now he
nodded and added briskly:

"Best place now is the safari camp. We'll head back at once."

Only time had run out. A noise sounded with a metallic ring. Rynch
whirled, needler cocked. A glittering ball about the size of his fist
rolled away from contact with a boulder, came to rest in the deep
depression of one of Hume's boot tracks. Then another flash through
the air, a clatter as a second ball spun across a patch of gravel.

The balls seemed to appear out of the air. Displaying rainbow glints
they rolled in a semicircle about the two men. Rynch stooped, then
Hume's fingers latched about his wrist, dragging his hand away from
the globe. It was only then that he realized that sharp action had
detached his attention from that ball he had wanted to take up.