Star Hunter (7 page)

"Don't touch!" Hume barked. "And don't look at that too closely! Come
along!" He pulled Rynch forward through the yet unclosed arc of the
globe circle.

Hume detoured around the feasting scavengers and brought Rynch with
him at a trot. They could hear behind them the plop and tinkle of more
globes. Glancing back Rynch saw one fall close to the bodies of the
water-cats.

"Wait a minute!" He pulled back against Hume's hold. Here was a chance
to see what effect that crystal had on the clawed carrion eater.

There was a change in the crystal: Yellow now, then red—red as the
few scraps of fur remaining on the rapidly disappearing body.

"Look!"

The pulsating carpet which had covered the dead feline ceased to move.
But towards that spot rolled two more of the globes, approaching the
scavengers. Now the clawed things were stirring, dropping away from
their prey. They spread out in a patch, moved purposefully forward.
Behind them, as guardians might head a flock, rolled three globes,
flushing scarlet, then more.

Hume's hand came up. From the cone tip of the ray tube spat a lance of
fire, to strike the middle crystal. The beam was reflected into the
block of scavengers. Scaled bodies, twisted, crisped, were ash. But
the crystal continued to roll at the same pace.

"Move!" Hume's other hand hit Rynch's shoulder, knocked him forward in
an impetuous shove which nearly took him off his feet. Both men began
to run.

"What—what are those things?" Rynch appealed between panting breaths.

"I don't know—and I don't like their looks. They're between us and
the safari camp if we keep to the river—"

"Between us and the river now." Rynch saw that glittering swoop
through the air, marked the landing of a ball near the water's edge.

"Might be trying to box us in. But that's not going to work.
See—ahead there where that log's caught between two rocks? Run out on
that when we reach there and take to the water. I don't think those
things can float and if they sink to the bottom that ought to fix them
as far as we are concerned."

Rynch ran, still holding the needler. He balanced along the drift log
Hume had pointed out and a jump sent him floundering in the brown
stream thigh deep. Hume joined him, his face grim.

"Downstream—"

Rynch looked. One shape—two—three—Clearly detailed where matching
vegetation gave them no covering camouflage, the watchers had come out
of the woods at last. A line of them were walking quietly and upright
towards the humans, their blue-green fuzz covering like a mist under
the direct rays of the sun. Quiet as they seemed at present, the
things out of the Jumalan forest were a picture of sheer brute
strength as they moved.

"Let's get out of here—fast!"

The men kept moving, and always after them padded that silent line of
green-blue, pushing them farther and farther away from the safari
camp, on towards the rising mountain peaks. Just as the globes had
shaken the scavengers loose from their meal and sent them marching on,
so were the humans being herded for some unknown purpose.

At least, once the march of the beasts began, they saw and heard no
more of the globes. And as they reached a curve in the river, Hume
stopped, swung around, stood studying the line of decorously pacing
animals.

"We can pick them off with the needler or the ray."

The Hunter shook his head. "You don't kill," he recited the credo of
his Guild, "not until you are sure. There is a method behind this, and
method means intelligence."

Handling of X-tee creatures and peoples was a part of Guild training.
In spite of his devious game here on Jumala, Hume was Guild educated
and Rynch was willing to leave such decisions to him.

The other held out the ray tube. "Take this, cover me, but don't use
it until I say so. Understand?"

He waited only for Rynch's nod before he started, at a deliberate pace
which matched that of the beasts, back through the river shallows to
meet them. But that advancing line halted, stood waiting in silence.
Hume's hands went up, palm out, he spoke slowly in Basic-X-Tee clicks:

"Friend." This was all Rynch could make out of that sing-song of
syllables Rynch knew to be a contact pattern.

The dark eye pits continued to stare. A light breeze ruffled the fuzz
covering of wide shoulders, long muscular arms. Not a head moved, not
one of those heavy, rounded jaws opened to emit any answering sound.
Hume halted. The silence was threatening, a portending atmosphere
spread from the alien things as might a tangible wave.

For perhaps two breaths they stood so, man facing alien. Then Hume
turned, walked back, his face set. Rynch offered him the ray tube.

"Fight our way out?"

"Too late. Look!"

Moving lines of blue-green coming down to the river. Not five or six
now—a dozen—twenty. There was a small trickle of moisture down the
side of the Hunter's brown face.

"We're penned—except straight ahead."

"But we're going to fight!" Rynch protested.

"No. Move on!"

It was some time before Hume found what he wanted, an islet in
midstream lacking any growth and rising to a rough pinnacle. The sides
were seamed with crevices and caves which promised protection for
one's back in any desperate struggle. And they had discovered it none
too soon, for the late afternoon shadows were lengthening.

There had been no attack, just the trailing to herd the men to the
northeast. And Rynch had lost the first tight pinch of panic, though
he knew the folly of underestimating the unknown.

They climbed with unspoken consent, going clear to the top, where they
huddled together on a four-foot tableland. Hume unhooked his distance
lenses, but it was toward the rises of the mountains that he aimed
them, not along the back trail.

Rynch wriggled about, studied the river and its banks. The beasts
there were quiet, blue-green lumps, standing down on the river bank or
squatting in the grass.

"Nothing." Hume lowered the lenses, held them before his broad chest
as he still watched the peaks.

"What did you expect?" Rynch snapped. He was hungry, but not hungry
enough to abandon the islet.

Hume laughed shortly. "I don't know. Only I'm sure they are heading us
in that direction."

"Look here," Rynch rounded on him. "You know this planet, you've been
here before."

"I was one of the survey team that approved it for the Guild."

"Then you must have combed it pretty thoroughly. How is it that you
didn't know about them?" He gestured to their pursuers.

"That is what I would like to ask a few assorted experts right about
now," Hume returned. "The verifiers registered no intelligent native
life here."

"No native life." Rynch chewed that over, came up with the obvious
explanation. "All right—so then maybe our blue-backed friends are
imported. Suppose someone's running a private business of his own here
and wants to get rid of visitors?"

Hume looked thoughtful. "No." He did not enlarge upon his negative.
Sitting down he pulled a cylinder container from a belt loop and shook
out four tablets, handing two to Rynch, mouthing the others.

"Vita-blocks—good for twenty-four hours sustenance."

The iron rations depended upon by all exploring services did not have
the satisfying taste of real food. However Rynch swallowed them
dutifully before he descended with Hume to river level. The Hunter
splashed water from the stream into a depression in the rock and
dropped a pinch of clarifying powder into it.

"With the dark," he announced, "we might be able to get through their
lines."

"You believe that?"

Hume laughed. "No—but one doesn't overlook the factor of sheer luck.
Also, I don't care to finish up at the place they may have chosen for
us." He tilted his chin to study the sky. "We'll take watches and rest
in turn. No use trying anything until it is dark—unless they start to
move in. You take the first one?"

As Rynch nodded, Hume edged back into a crevice as a shelled creature
withdrawing to natural protection, going to sleep as easily as if he
could control that state by will. Rynch, watching him curiously for a
second or two before climbing up to a position from which he judged he
could see all sides of their refuge, determined not to be surprised.

The watchers were crouched down, waiting with that patience which had
impressed him from his first sight of the camp sentries back in the
forest. There was no movement, no sound. They were simply there—on
guard. And Rynch did not believe that the darkness of night would
bring any relaxation of that vigilance.

He leaned back, feeling the grit of the rocky surface against his bare
back and shoulders. Under his hand was the most efficient and
formidable weapon known to the frontier worlds, from this post he
could keep the enemy under surveillance and think.

Hume had had him planted here, in the first place, provided with the
memory of Rynch Brodie—the reward for him was to be a billion
credits. Too much staff work had gone into his conditioning for just a
small stake.

So Rynch Brodie was on Jumala, and Hume had come with witnesses to
find him. Another part of his mind stood aloof now, applauding the
clearness of his reasoning. Rynch Brodie was to be discovered a
castaway on Jumala. Only, matters had not worked out according to
Hume's plan. In the first place he was certain he had not been
intended to know that he was not Rynch Brodie. For a fleeting second
he wondered why that conditioning had not completely worked, then went
back to the problem of his relationship with Hume.

No, the Out-Hunter had expected a castaway who would be just what he
ordered. Then this affair of the watchers—creatures the Guild men had
not found here a few months ago—Rynch felt a small cold chill along
his spine. Hume's game was one thing, something he could understand,
but the silent beasts were another and somehow far more disturbing
threat.

Rynch edged forward, watching the mist on the water, his brain
striving to solve this other puzzle as neatly as he thought he had
discovered the reason for his scrambled memories and his being on
Jumala.

The mist was an added danger. Thick enough and those watchers could
move in under its curtain. A needler was efficient, yes, but it could
wipe out only an enemy at which it was aimed. Blind cross sweeping
with its darts would only exhaust the clip without results, save by
lucky chance.

On the other hand, suppose they could turn that same gray haze to
their own advantage—use it to blanket their withdrawal? He was about
to go to Hume with that suggestion when he sighted the new move in
their odd battle with the aliens.

A wink of light—two more—blinking, following the erratic course by
the pull of the stream. All bobbing along toward the rugged coastline
of the islet. Those had appeared out of nothingness as suddenly as the
globes when this chase had begun.

The globes and the winking lights on the water connected in his mind,
argued new danger. Rynch took careful aim, fired a dart at one which
had grounded on the pointed tip of the rocks where the river current
came together after its division about the island. For the first time
Rynch realized those things below were moving
against
the
current—they had come upstream as if propelled.

He had fired and the light was still there, two more coming in behind
it, so that now there was an irregular cluster of them. And there was
activity on the water-washed rocks before them. Just as the scavengers
had moved ahead of the globes on land, so now aquatic creatures had
come out of the river, were flopping higher on the islet. And those
lights were changing color—from white to reddish-yellow.

Rynch scrabbled with one hand in a rock crevice, found a stone he had
noted earlier. He hurled that at the cluster of lights. There was a
puff of brilliant red, one was gone. Something flopping on the rocks
gave a mewling cry and somersaulted back into the water. Then a finger
of mist drew between Rynch and the lights which were now only faint,
glowing patches. He swung down from his perch, shook Hume awake.

The Out-Hunter made that instant return to full consciousness which
was another defense for the men who live long on the rim of wild
worlds.

"What—?"

Rynch pulled him forward. The mist had thickened, but there were more
of those ominous lights at water level, spreading down both sides of
the point, forming a wall. Dark forms moved out of the water ahead of
them, flopping on the rocks, pressing higher, towards the ledge where
the men stood.

"Those globes—I think they're moving in the river now." Rynch found
another stone, took careful aim, and smashed a second one. "The
needler has no effect on them," he reported. "Stones do—but I don't
know why."

They searched about them in the crevices for more ammunition, laying
up a line of fist-sized rocks, while the lights gathered in, spreading
farther and farther down the shores of the islet. Hume cried out
suddenly, and aimed his ray tube below. The lance of its blast cut the
dark as might a bolt of lightning.

With a shrill squeal, a blot shadow detached from the slope
immediately below them. A vile, musky scent, now mingled with the
stench of burning flesh, set them coughing.

"Water spider!" Hume identified. "If they are driving those out and up
at...."

He fumbled at his equipment belt and then tossed an object downward to
disintegrate in a shower of fiery sparks. Wherever those sparks
touched rock or ground they flared up in tall thin columns of fire,
lighting up the nightmare on the rocks and up the ledges.

Rynch fired the needler, Hume's ray tube flashed and flashed again.
Things squealed, or grunted, or died silently, while clawing to reach
the upper ledges. He could not be sure of the nature of some of those
things. One, armed and clawed as the scavengers, was nearly as large
as a water-cat. And a furry, man-legged creature, with a double-jawed
head, bore also a ring of phosphorescent eyes set in a complete circle
about its skull. They were alien life routed out of the water.