Star Hunter

by Andre Norton

  It was mid-afternoon when the flitter took to the air once again, scattering the hovering globes. There was no alteration in the ranks of the blue watchers waiting—for the barrier to go down, or someone in the camp to step beyond that protection?

  “They’re stupid,” Vye said.

  “Not stupid, just geared to one set of actions,” Hume returned.

  “Which could mean that what sends them here can’t change its orders.”

  “Good guess. I’d say that they were governed by something akin to our tapes. No provision made for any innovations.”

  “So the guiding intelligence could be long gone.”

  “I think it has been.” Hume then changed the subject sharply.

  “How did you get into service at the Starfall?”

  It was hard now to think back to Nahuatl—as if the Vye Lansor who had been swamper in that den of the port town was a different person altogether. In that patch of memories into which Rynch Brodie still intruded he hunted for the proper answer.

  “I couldn’t hold the state jobs. And once you get the habit of eating, you don’t starve willingly.”

  “Why not the state jobs?”

  “Without premium they’re all low-rung tenders’ places. I tried hard enough. But to sit pressing buttons when a light flashed, hour after hour—” Vye shook his head. “They said I was too erratic and gave me the shove. One more move on and it would have been compulsive conditioning. I turned port-drift instead.”

  “Ever thought of trying for a loan premium?”

  Vye laughed shortly. “Loan premium? That’s a true fantasy if you’ve been job hopping. None of the companies will take a chance on a man with an in and out record. Oh, I tried….” That memory arose to the surface, clear and very chilling. Yes, he had tried to break out of the net the law and custom had put around him from the day he had been made a state child. “No—it was conditioning, or port-drift.”

  “And you chose port-drift?”

  “I was still me—as long as I stayed away from conditioning.”

  “Then you became Rynch Brodie in spite of your flight.”

  “No—well, maybe, for a while. But I’m still Vye Lansor here.”

  “Yes, here. And I don’t think you’ll have to worry about raising a premium to get a new start. You can claim victim compensation, you know.”

  Vye was silent, but Hume did not let him remain so.

  “When the Patrol arrives, you put in your claim. I’ll back you.”

  “You can’t.”

  “That’s where you’re mistaken,” Hume told him crisply. “I’ve already taped a full story back at the spacer—it’s on record now.”

  Vye frowned. The Hunter seemed determined to ask for the worst the Patrol—or the planet police back on Nahuatl—could deal out. A case of illegal conditioning was about as serious as you could get.

  They shot along the diagonal of the triangle made by three points, the mountain valley, Wass’ camp, and the safari headquarters, heading to the slopes up which the men must be herded if the beasts were shepherding them to the mountain valley. Vye, surveying the forest thick below, began to doubt they would ever be able to pick them up before they reached the valley gate.

  Hume took a weaving course, zigzagging back and forth, while they both watched intently for a glint from one of the globes, any movement which would betray that trail. And it was on one of the upper slopes that the flitter passed over two of the blue beasts lumbering along. Neither of the creatures paid any attention to the flyer, they moved with purpose on some mission of their own.

  “Maybe the tail end of the hunting pack,” Hume commented.

  He sent the flyer hovering over a stunted line of trees and brush. Beyond that was bare rock. But though they hung for moments, nothing moved into that open.

  “Wrong scent somehow.” Hume brought the flitter around. He had it on manual control now, keeping it answering to the quick changes of his will.

  A longer sweep supplied the answer—a vegetation roofed slit running back into the uplands, in a way resembling the crevice through which they had originally found their way into this country. Hume brought the flyer along that. But if the men they sought were pushing their way through below they could not be sighted from the air. At last, with evening drawing in, Hume was forced to admit failure.

  “Wait by the gap?” Vye asked.

  “Have to now.” Hume glanced about. “I’d say maybe tomorrow—mid-morning before they make it that far—if they are here. We’ll have plenty of time.”

  Time for what? To make ready for a pitched battle with Wass—or with the beasts herding him? To try in the space of hours to solve the mystery of the lake?

  “Do you think we could blast that thing in the lake?” Vye asked.

  “We might be able to, just might. But that must be the last resort. We want that in working order for the X-Tee men to study. No, we’d better plan to hold Wass at the gate, wait for the Patrol to come in.”

  Less than an hour later after a soaring approach, Hume brought the flitter down with neat skill on the top of one of the cliffs which helped to form the portal of the gap. There was no difference in the scene below, save that where the two bodies of the blue beasts had lain there were now only clean and shining bones.

  Darkness spread out from the lake woods like a growing stain of evil promise as the sun fell behind the peaks. Night came earlier here than in the plains.

  “Watch!” Vye had been gazing down the gap; he was the first to note that movement in the cloaking bush.

  Out of the cover trotted a four-footed, antlered animal he had not seen before.

  “Syken deer,” Hume identified. “But why in the mountains? It’s a long way from its home range.”

  The deer did not pause, but headed directly for the gap and, as it neared, Vye saw that its brown coat was roughed with patches of white froth, while more dripped from the pale pink tongue protruding from its open jaws, and its shrunken sides heaved.

  “Driven!” Hume picked up a stone, hurled it to strike the ground ahead of the deer.

  The creature did not start, nor show any sign of seeing the rock fall. It trotted on at the same wearied pace, passed the portal rocks into the valley. Then it stood still, wedge-shaped head up, black horns displayed, while the nose flaps expanded, testing the air, until it bounded toward the lake, disappearing in the woods.

  Though they shared watches during the night there were no other signs of life, nor did the deer reappear from the woods. With the mid-morning there was a sudden sound to warn them—a wild cry which must have come from a human throat. Hume tossed one of the needlers to Vye, took the other, and they scrambled down to the floor of the gap passage.

  Wass did not lead his men, he came behind the reeling trio as if he had joined the blasts as driver. And while his men wavered, staggered, gave the appearance of nearly complete exhaustion, he still walked with a steady tread, in command of his wits, his fears, and the company.

  As the first of the men blundered on, a fresh trickle of red running down his bruised face, Hume called:

  “Wass!”

  The Veep stopped short. He made no move to unsling the needler he carried, its barrel pointing skyward over his shoulder, but his round head with its upstanding comb of hair swung slightly from side to side.

  “Stop—Wass—this is a trap!”

  His three men kept on. Vye moved, for Peake leading that wavering group, stumbled, would have fallen had not the younger man advanced from the shadows to steady him.

  “Vye!” Hume made his name a warning.

  He had only time to glance around. Wass, his broad face impassive except for the eyes—those burning madman’s eyes—was aiming a ray tube.

  Broken free of his hold, Peake fell to the right, came up against Hume. As Vye went down he saw Wass dart forward at a speed he wouldn’t have believed a driven man could summon. The Veep lunged, escaping the shot the Hunter had no time to aim, rolled, and came up with the needler Vye
had dropped.

  Then Hume, hampered by Peake’s feeble clawing, met head on the swinging barrel of that weapon. He gave a startled grunt and smashed back against the cliff, a wave of scarlet blood streaming down the side of his head.

  The momentum of Wass’ charge carried him on. He collided with his men, and the last thing Vye saw, was the huddle of all four of them, flailing arms and legs, spinning on through the gate into the valley with Wass’ hoarse, wordless shouting, bringing echoes from the cliffs.

  13

  *

  He lay against a rock, and it was quiet again, except for a small whimpering sound which hurt, joined with the eating pain in his side. Vye turned his head, smelled burned cloth and flesh. Cautiously he tried to move, bring his hand across his body to the belt at his waist. One small part of his mind was very clear—if he could get his fingers to the packet there, and the contents of that packet to his mouth, the pain would go away, and maybe he could slip back into the darkness again.

  Somehow he did it, pulled the packet out of its container pouch, worked the fingers of his one usable hand until he shredded open the end of the covering. The tablets inside, spilled out. But he had three or four of them in his grasp. Laboriously he brought his hand up, mouthed them all together, chewing their bitterness, swallowing them as best he could without water.

  Water—the lake! For a moment he was back in time, feeling for the water bulbs he should be carrying. Then the incautious movement of his questing fingers brought a sudden stab of raw, red agony and he moaned.

  The tablets worked. But he did not slide back into unconsciousness again as the throbbing torture became something remote and untroubling. With his good arm he braced himself against the cliff, managed to sit up.

  Sun flashed on the metal barrel of a needler which lay in the trampled dust between him and another figure, still very still, with a pool of blood about the head. Vye waited for a steadying breath or two, then started the infinitely long journey of several feet which separated him from Hume.

  He was panting heavily when he crawled close enough to touch the Hunter. Hume’s face, cheek down in the now sodden dust, was dabbled with congealing blood. As Vye turned the hunter’s head, it rolled limply. The other side was a mass of blood and dust, too thick to afford Vye any idea of how serious a hurt Hume had taken. But he was still alive.

  With his good hand Vye thrust his numb and useless left one into the front of his belt. Then, awkwardly he tried to tend Hume. After a close inspection he thought that the mass of blood had come from a ragged tear in the scalp above the temple and the bone beneath had escaped damage. From Hume’s own first-aid pack he crushed tablets into the other’s slack mouth, hoping they would dissolve if the Hunter could not swallow. Then he relaxed against the cliff to wait—for what he could not have said.

  Wass’ party had gone on into the valley. When Vye turned his head to look down the slope he could see nothing of them. They must have tried to push on to the lake. The flitter was at the top of the cliff, as far out of his reach now as if it were in planetary orbit. There was only the hope that a rescue party from the safari camp might come. Hume had set the directional beam on the flyer, when he had brought her down, to serve as a beacon for the Patrol, if and when Starns was lucky enough to contact a cruiser.

  “Hmmm….” Hume’s mouth moved, cracked the drying bloody mask on his lips and chin. His eyes blinked open and he lay staring up at the sky.

  “Hume—” Vye was startled at the sound of his own voice, so thready and weak, and by the fact that he found it difficult to speak at all.

  The other’s head turned; now the eyes were on him and there was a spark of awareness in them.

  “Wass?” The whisper was as strained as his own had been.

  “In there.” Vye’s hand lifted from Hume’s chest indicating the valley.

  “Not good.” Hume blinked again. “How bad?” His attention was not for his own hurt; his eyes searched Vye. And the latter glanced down at his side.

  By some chance, perhaps because of his struggle with Peake, Wass’ beam had not struck true, the main core of the bolt passing between his arm and his side, burning both. How deeply he could not tell, in fact he did not want to find out. It was enough that the tablets had banished the pain now.

  “Seared a little,” he said. “You’ve a bad cut on your head.”

  Hume frowned. “Can we make the flitter?”

  Vye moved, then relaxed quickly into his former position. “Not now,” he evaded, knowing that neither of them would be able to take that climb.

  “Beam on?” Hume repeated Vye’s thoughts of moments before. “Patrol coming?”

  Yes, eventually the Patrol would come—but when? Hours—days? Time was their enemy now. He did not have to say any of that, they both knew.

  “Needler—” Hume’s head had turned in the other direction; now his hand pointed waveringly to the weapon in the dust.

  “They won’t be back,” Vye stated the obvious. Those others had been caught in the trap, the odds on their return without aid were very high.

  “Needler!” Hume repeated more firmly, and tried to sit up, falling back with a sharp intake of breath.

  Vye edged around, stretched out his leg and scraped the toe of his boot into the loop of the carrying sling, drawing the weapon up to where he could get his hand on it. As he steadied it across his knee Hume spoke again:

  “Watch for trouble!”

  “They all went in,” Vye protested.

  But Hume’s eyes had closed again. “Trouble—maybe….” His voice trailed off. Vye rested his hand on the stock of the needler.

  “Hoooooo!”

  That beast wail—as they had heard it in the valley! Somewhere from the wood. Vye brought the needler around, so that the sights pointed in that direction. There death might be hunting, but there was nothing he could do.

  A scream, filled with all the agony of a man in torment, caught up on the echoes of that other cry. Vye sighted a wild waving of bushes. A figure, very small and far away, crawled into the open on hands and knees and then crumpled into only a shadowy blot on the moss. Again the beast’s cry, and a shouting!

  Vye watched a second man back out of the trees, still facing whatever pursued him. He caught the glint of sun on what must be a ray tube. Leaves crisped into a black hole, curls of smoke arose along the path of that blast.

  The man kept on backing, passed the inert body of his companion, glancing now and then over his shoulder at the slope up which he was making a slow but steady way. He no longer rayed the bush, but there was the crackle of a small fire outlining the ragged hole his beam had cut.

  Back two strides, three. Then he turned, made a quick dash, again facing around after he had gained some yards in the open. Vye saw now it was Wass.

  Another dash and an about face. But this time to confront the enemy. There were three of them, as monstrous as those Vye and Hume had fought in the same place. And one of them was wounded, swinging a charred forepaw before it, and giving voice to a wild frenzy of roars.

  Wass leveled the ray tube, centered sights on the beast nearest to him. The man hammered at the firing button with the flat of his other hand, and almost paid for that second of distraction with his life, for the creature made one of those lightning swift dashes Vye had so luckily escaped. The clawed forepaw tore a strip from the shoulder of Wass’ tunic, left sprouting red furrows behind. But the man had thrown the useless tube into its face, was now running for the gap.

  Vye held the needler braced against his knee to fire. He saw the dart quiver in the upper arm of the beast, and it halted to pull out that sliver of dangerously poisoned metal, crumpled it into a tight twist. Vye continued to fire, never sure of his aim, but seeing those slivers go home in thick legs, in outstretched forelimbs, in wide, pendulous bellies. Then there were three blue shapes lying on the slope behind the man running straight for the gap.

  Wass hit the invisible barrier full force, was hurled back, to lie gasping on
the turf, but already raising himself to crawl again to the gateway he saw and could not believe was barred. Vye closed his eyes. He was very tired now—tired and sleepy—maybe the pain pills were bringing the secondary form of relief. But he could hear, just beyond, the man who beat at that unseen curtain, first in anger and fear, and then just in fear, until the fear was a lonesome crying that went on and on until even that last feeble assault on the barrier failed.

  *

  “We have here the tape report of Ras Hume, Out-Hunter of the Guild.”

  Vye watched the officer in the black and silver of the Patrol, a black and silver modified with the small, green, eye badge of X-Tee, with level and hostile gaze.

  “Then you know the story.” He was going to make no additions nor explanations. Maybe Hume had cleared him. All right, that was all he would ask, to be free to go his way and forget about Jumala—and Ras Hume.

  He had not seen the Hunter since they had both been loaded into the Patrol flitter in the gap. Wass had come out of the valley a witless, dazed creature, still under the mental influence of whoever, or whatever, had set that trap. As far as Vye knew the Veep had not yet recovered his full senses, he might never do so. And if Hume had not dictated that confession to damn himself before the Patrol, he might have escaped. They could suspect—but they would have had no proof.

  “You continue to refuse to tape?” The officer favored him with one of the closed-jaw looks Vye had often seen on the face of authority.

  “I have my rights.”

  “You have the right to claim victim compensation—a good compensation, Lansor.”

  Vye shrugged and then winced at a warning from the tender skin over ribs.

  “I make no claim, and no tape,” he repeated. And he intended to go on saying that as long as they asked him. This was the second visit in two days and he was getting a little tired of it all. Perhaps he should do as prudence dictated and demand to be returned to Nahuatl. Only his odd, unexplainable desire to at least see Hume kept him from making the request they would have to honor.